


Moments of Silence

by JiraiyaWhitney



Category: Homestuck
Genre: End Game Speculation, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Past Rape, Post-Sburb, Post-Sgrub, Sadstuck, albino!Dave, mentions of noncon, past noncon, slight-AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-16 08:33:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 62,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JiraiyaWhitney/pseuds/JiraiyaWhitney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are Fourteen Players. There are only Twelve Places available for them to take in the New Universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Close the Door and Walk Away

                Everything happens really fast. The Alpha and Beta kids join forces with the Beta Trolls and just like that Bec Noir attacks. One thing after another after another and suddenly, everyone is standing in front of a large, multi-colored…  _house_  that has twelve squares. The majority of it is green and red, but there are some squares that are purple. Actually… Three squares are green, four are red and five of them are purple, now that they truly look. Rose opens the door, whose handle looks mysteriously like Skaia from the outside.

                Inside, there are twelve glowing panels. Jade, ever the most rambunctious and ready to jump into anything at any given moment, immediately goes out to investigate. Jake, of course, joins her. It doesn’t take more than three seconds for them to realize that the glowing panels trap them inside. She beats her hands against the glowing walls, fighting to get out, fighting to get free, to do  _anything, please, “get me out of here!”_ The others go to her and while their hands phase through, no amount of pulling and tugging will get them free.

                Rose eventually calls for them to stop. “Don’t you see?” She mutters. “These are the things that are going to transport us to our universe. The new universe that we created with our joined sessions.” There’s a flurry before Jade barks and covers her mouth, embarrassed. Everyone has grown used to it, so everyone brushes it off. No one puts any thought into it until there are only two more positions left and there are four people standing outside of the panels. “Fourteen of us stand, though,” Jade whines from behind her glass wall. “We all fought against Noir! We all deserve to go!”

                “We could just… double up,” Terezi offers. It’s only her, Rose, Dave and Karkat that stand outside of the panels. “Karkat and I could go in the same one and Rose and Dave could go in the same one. We’re genetically the closest to each other, anyway. So… why not? It’s not like we were ever given the rules here. For all we know, maybe The Game wants us to do that.”

                “Good idea, TZ,” Dave comments. He gently takes Rose up and holds her bridal style. She clings to his neck as he gets his balance, but then he tells her that he has her and she can let go. She gives him a weird look but does just that. Dave glances over to see that Karkat has done the same to Terezi. She has her head cradled on his shoulder, even.

                Dave walks Rose over to the panel closest to them and drops her in, feet first, careful not to be standing on it as he does so. She beats at the glass walls, attempting to get out. He hears Terezi’s feet touch the ground and a golden  _shhhink._ He takes Rose’s face in his hands and gently kisses her cheek. “Take care of them, sis.”

                “No—Dave! Dave you fought the hardest out of all of us!  _Get in here_!”

                He shakes his head gently and hugs her, yet again watching his feet. “You know I love you, right, Rose? So you have to take over for me and watch out for them.”

                “You gotta admit,” Dirk mutters, “This is all pretty normal for him. I saw it coming a mile away.”

                Roxy hiccups, grimaces and nods. “Yeah. I mean, his other life killed he presidents and then disappeared from the world. He was a hero then, too. Obviously,” she hiccups again and holds her hand in front of her chest. She punches the glass wall encasing her angrily. “Obviously he’s going to do something like that in this life.”

                “C’mon,” Karkat says, calling to him. He’s already standing in front of the door, though, and his hand has it pushed open ever so slightly. “It’s time we sent them off.”

                Dave smiles lightly at Rose and nods his head. He walks backward for a moment before he turns around and leaves. Karkat calmly closes the door behind them. It breaks both of their hearts to hear them screaming for them, telling them to stay, to just join one of them—

                And it’s really quiet as the step further away on the plate in front of the door. It’s too quiet. Dave feels like the silence has wrapped him up so hard that he’s suffocating.

               They turn and watch as, one by one, Rose’s face appears in one of the green squares. John’s and Jade’s take up the other two green ones. Kanaya’s, Terezi’s, Sollux’s, Gamzee’s and Aradia’s faces appear on the purple squares. Dirk’s, Roxy’s, Jane’s and Jake’s appear on the red ones. Karkat raises a hand to wave. Dave, slowly, takes off his glasses and does the same. They deserve a proper send off.

                There are tears running down most of their faces as Jade’s face disappears and a ball of white light launches out of the house top. Kanaya’s disappears in the same manor. Dirk, Roxy, Sollux, John, Gamzee, Jake, Jane, Aradia, and then all that is left are Terezi and Rose. Terezi spreads her hand in front of her face and carefully draws out a heart on the glass in front of her. Rose sobs and waves. Rose and Terezi disappear and all that is left are Dave and Karkat.

                They’re the last two.

                They didn’t even get to win The Game and they were the ones that killed Noir. Dave doesn’t even realize he is crying until his knees hit the ground beneath them. His hands fist as his entire body shakes. He shakes. He sobs. He will never leave this game. But… But… But at least… at least the others. They left. It’s worth it. It’s worth it.

                “Karkat, tell me it’s worth it.”

                “ _I don’t even know if it is_.” The other many confesses. He turns to see that the man has red tears running down his face, staining the collar of his shirt. The other man is on his knees, too, but he isn’t bent over like Dave. He’s just kneeling there, looking at the roof. Dave gently reaches out and puts his hand on Karkat’s shoulder. It’s the first time they have touched since the dick-drawing fiasco in Rose’s book. Immediately, Karkat turns into him and hides in his chest and sobs. Dave sobs over him.

                This is it.

                They’re going to die in this Game and there is no way they can stop it.

                They beat the fucking game, but SBurb is still going to take their lives.

                He… Dave wants to just die now and save The Game the problem of killing him. He’ll die of old age, won’t he?

                Slowly, ever so slowly, Karkat stops crying into him, but they’re both exhausted. The only things they have left are what they have captchalogued, which isn’t much in the first place, but Dave just got DaveSprite’s deck, too, so maybe that’s something? He doesn’t know. He didn’t have the chance to look before he died. They don’t even have the asteroid anymore since it was destroyed in the fight, but this place appears to be part of another asteroid belt around Alpha Derse.

                “Karkat?” He whispers once both of them stop crying. The other man makes a small noise. “What do we do now?”

                “We… we keep living.”

                “ _How?”_

                The other man shrugs and it occurs, rather belatedly, to Dave that this is the closest they have ever been in the history of ever. And, maybe, just maybe, this is… this is the end.

                “I don’t know, Strider. S-Stop asking me these things. Everything I have lived for all this time just got rocketed off to a new universe. A universe  _we_ helped create. A universe that we aren’t even allowed  _into_.”

                “M-Maybe we should start walking… until we can find an asteroid where we can live.”

                “How long will we survive? We don’t have any food or even an alchemiter.”

                “…I just hope what we did was right.”

                Karkat nods and, ever so slowly, the Knights pick themselves up and calmly take one step forward.

                And one step forward.

                They don’t even know where they’re going.

                All they know is that they’re leaving behind the last thing that their friends—their lives—touched.

                And they can’t return.


	2. The Hubbub with CaptchaCards

                The first place that they find is small. They had been walking for two days, surviving on the packs of Gushers that John shoved at Dave after they met up and Dave mentioned that they were made by Betty Crocker. The other man had, evidently, already known, but he had given up because  _someone else_ knew, too. They’re stale, taste like three-week-old meat that has gone green in some places and they don’t gush, but Dave is still hard-pressed to ever think that they  _did_  in the first place. He was never particularly a big fan of sweets of any sort, but he still treated them as they should be—treats.

                Growing up, he and Bro had been very poor. They couldn’t afford a lot of things and Dave knows that Bro worked his ass off for him just to bring home healthy things for dinner. More nights than not, they ate tofu. (Dave actually prefers tofu to a lot of different meats because of this.) Bro knows the right foods to give to a growing boy and he isn’t the inconsiderate asshole that would feed his child pizza every night of the week just because he didn’t feel like cooking for some reason or not. Bro would come home from eighteen hour work days just to make sure that Dave ate dinner. Pizza was unusual to Dave and the first time he ate it, he really didn’t like it. At all. But, it’s the kind of thing that grows on you, right? So he took a few more bites and figured that it could be worse. Everything could be worse. Needless to say, Bro spent most of his money on bills and healthy food, so junk food like Doritos and candies like Skittles and Gushers—things other kids eat since they’re two hours into the womb—didn’t really enter Dave’s life until he was about twelve and got a job as a paper-boy. He gave his entire first paycheck to Bro because he didn’t know what he wanted. Bro, first chance he got (three days later) took him to the store and they bought those things. Dave would rather Bro spent it on something like the water bill, but he could settle (even if their Xbox and the majority of their five-game-repertoire came out of his paychecks at some point).

                But, enough of his childhood dramas. That was all before SBurb and it’s, therefore, not important. It took two days of walking before he and Karkat found a place suitable to sleep in for a few days. There have been other places, not many, but all that they found there were masses of  _black energy-blobs_ they had to fight back to find a few extra captchalogue cards. They mostly go to Dave’s sylladex since Karkat seems to hate the EncryptionType one he traded for his old one with Sollux. Dave doesn’t even want to think about what it may look like after he hears the stories of the old safes that he used to leave lying around everywhere.

                The place that they find has three rooms, total. One of them doubles as a “kitchenette” type room—there is a fridge, filled with water bottles and a small amount of food (maybe a couple days’ worth?), but that’s about it considering what could have  _once_ been a stove is in ruins—and a sitting room with a beaten sofa and a small, relatively soft, place rug. There’s another with a single bed—queen sized—and a bathroom. Karkat heads straight there. The first thing Dave hears is the sound of the water turning on. He pulls out a water bottle from the fridge after a short inner debate over whether or not anyone still lives here (he decides “no” after re-examining the “stove”).

                Then, he lays out the cards that DaveSprite left him to go through them. He sorts them by color, first and foremost, but stops when he realizes what’s wrong.

                Karkat comes out of the “Ablution Chamber” half an hour later, wearing his old pants and drying his face off with his shirt, which he flings to the side afterward. It gets caught on the corner of the couch, dangling by only the rip at the wrist. The entire thing is tattered. It’s probably better off to think of it as a towel than it is to think of it as a shirt.

                Despite Karkat’s face being dry, his hair is still wet, and it’s slowly dripping long lines of water onto his shoulders, which are running down his chest and, probably, back—Dave can’t see that part. The water is making the light in the room catch the lines between Karkat’s muscles and shine, only proving to make them stand out more. Karkat is, predictably after a Three-Years-Plus session, ripped: full six pack abs, well-toned pectorals, thick shoulders, corded arms.

                If Dave was gay, he might be interested. However, he’s not gay, and thenceforth he has no opinion to it—other than to admit that, yes, he is ripped. End of discussion.

                “Yo, Kark, y’know if you can activate captchalogue cards if you don’t have the main modus?”

                “I dunno. Why?”

                “I’ve got Record Atlas,” he shrugs. “And you have that encryption one or other. But some of these look like Kanaya’s and Rose’s or the other’s.”

                “Like, Chastity or whatever Kanaya called it?”

                “Yeah.”

                “I dunno. We probably can, in theory. The main modus only makes it so that we can place objects within the cards and store them, right? Unless you have some updated Sylledex Holder like the Wallet Type or something.” Dave picks up the leather object and tosses it to him. “Where’d you get this?”

                “It’s what DaveSprite gave me all of his cards in.”

                “You sound like you’re thinkin’ something else.”

                Dave shrugs his shoulders. “I can’t see what’s in most of these cards, actually, but I can see Jade’s sketch-pad and a mini-alchemiter and stuff like that.”

                “So?”

                “ _So_ , I think that DaveSprite knew this was going to happen before we did.”

                “What? Knew we were going to give up places…” He clears his throat as the room gets suddenly  _very, very_ heavy all around them. “We were going to end up away from the others?”

                “Well, yeah. I mean, this is fuckin’  _Dirk’s_ unbreakable katana, am I right?” He passes him the card off-handedly. “And this is Jake’s gun-holster. This is Jane’s magnifying glass, John gave us his fuckin’ Gushers earlier, remember? A bunch of clothing that Rose knitted, too! It’s like DaveSprite asked for any and all of their captchacards that weren’t weapons or medical supplies. Well, actually, it looks like Terezi gave us those.”

                “That’s going to be Hell to sniff out of there when we need it.”

                “Well, we did just get a bunch of cards from those other places we have yet to program.”

                “We should make those ArrayType then. They can fit into this wallet and we’ll have full access.”

                “As boring as that is, yeah, that’s probably the best idea to go with. Never know when we might need this stuff and I don’t want to have to deal with protecting your back as you unlock a safe just to get out a new”—he picks something random from the floor, finds it to be Terezi’s and gives it a sniff—“cherry-scented lip stick or balm or whatever the fuck it’s called.” The small chap-stick tube pops out and rolls into Dave’s hand. He reads it, just to make sure he said the right name. He didn’t, but evidently it decided to take pity on him.

                “Because I’m  _ever_ going to need  _that_ in battle, Strider.”

                “Wouldn’t want those pretty lips of yours to get all chapped and sore now would we, Vantas?” He winks at the end, but throws the stick behind his back anyway. Karkat slaps the back of his head, knocks off his sunglasses and takes the empty card in the process. Dave chuckles as he replaces the sunglasses on his face and looks up again.

                Karkat is turning the card over in his hand experimentally. There is a deep set frown on his face as he looks over it, the edges especially. “I could probably reprogram all of these to their default,” he confesses. “If I had the right tools and enough time. It would be slow going and I could probably only do a handful at a time, but who knows what their default is? It could be Hash Map for all we know.”

                “ _And what’s wrong with Hash Map jackass_?”

                Karkat leaves him a long, suffering look ended with a low  _snirk_  as though he is laughing. “Each card is only designed with three default types, anyway. One is usually Hash, another is Tree and the last is Queue. All of them are exceedingly annoying and, quite frankly, not worth the motherfucking time it takes to pull anything out of them. From each of the locations, I can program them so that they’re Array, but getting them back to the default without the Program Cards could possibly destroy their mainframes. That leaves us with less and less and who knows how many we may need? At some point, we may need all of these for just food and water or something. If I even so much as fuck up with one of them—“

                “Then you fuck up with one of them and we make do.” Dave cuts him off. “Seriously, man, if we have enough food and water to fill up all of these”—he gestures to the cards in front of him, then points to the one in his hand—“then I’m pretty sure  _that one_ won’t kill us.”

                Karkat’s lips quirk upwards slightly to one side. They rest somewhere between a touched-smile and the sort of look one gets with they’re still sad and trying to smile. “Good point. But I can’t do it anyway.” He shrugs and drops the card. It flutters, turning over and over again before lying face-down on top of one of Jade’s “ _snugglebuddies_ ”. “ _I_  don’t have the right mainframe or the correct devices I would need to hack into such complicated pieces of machinery.”

                “These things are  _complicated?_ ”

                Karkat flicks his fingers at a card with one of Jade’s plushies. Dave hands it to him and watches as he sets to playing a quick game of memory with that one and a bunch of blank cards with the sort of skill and tiredness one only has after years of putting up with bullshit. (Dave suddenly feels much,  _much_ older than what he is as he thinks of it. He’s only played the game for about three years now but it feels like a lifetime.) The plushies are thrown aside after it’s decided that it’s the tattered remains of what was once a stuffed cat.

                The Troll’s thumbnail makes it into the card relatively easily. He has to move it around and twist his wrist, but eventually the front face of it pops straight off. There are wires and chips and  _who knows whats_  in there, including some sort of empty, white case Dave suspects once held the item in it. “Making the cards isn’t actually all that hard,” Karkat admits after a moment. “It would be easier to make these than it would be to make a husktop. I’ve suspected that Dirk made his and Roxy’s for a while now. But, like I said, they  _are_ hard to rewire through a computer.”

                “Couldn’t you just pop the ends of the wires out of this and plug it back in?”

                “Have you ever unplugged a computer while you’re in the middle of writing a fifty-page essay for school?”

                “Can’t say I’ve had to write a fifty-page essay.”

                “Humor me.”

                “Then no.”

                “And why is that?”

                “Because I would lose everything.”

                “Exactly.”

                “But isn’t that what you’re trying to do?”

                “Do you know how Captchalogue Cards quote-unquote ‘ _lose everything_ ’?”

                “Obviously not.”

                “They’re an off-once kind-of-deal. Do you remember how hard it was to turn it on when you got your first stack?” Dave nods minutely. “Pretty damn hard, right? That’s because the mainframe is only programed with the opening sequence once. It’s not put on a start-up sequence like your husktop is. If you turn it off or break it or snap it in half, then it’s gone for good, ‘less you have the reboot card which costs an arm, a leg and a bucket-full-of-wrigglers, maybe even a virgin-Troll on the Black Market. Which is a lot. Just so you know. I don’t even know where we would  _get_ them on the slight chance they even still exist.”

                “Where are you going with this, Vantas?” Dave slowly hands him the one with Jade’s tablet and stands up. “Because it sounds, to me, like you’re saying ‘I’m going to make everything I need to make to do this and finish making them while Dave takes his turn in the shower’.”

                He snaps the front cover of the card over the main wiring then drops it and takes the card from Dave as if he were just pinching it and ripping it from him. “I’m going to make everything I need to make to do this and finish making them while  _Strider_ hurries the fuck up with his motherfuckin’ ablution.”

                Dave chuckles lightly and steps over the pile, going straight to the bathroom. It’s small, cramped, and Dave doesn’t think he’ll spend much time in here. Immediately, he turns the water on and strips before stepping in.

                That  _motherfucker_ stole  _all the God damned hot water._

 _Holy_ fuck  _is that **cold**_.

                He hurries as quickly as he can, shivering before he steps out. He just hopes he didn’t shrink too much in the process. He locates a pair of jeans in his Record Atlas Modus that DaveSprite gave him right before he programed himself. He hates how  _skinny_ they are, but that’s what skinny jeans tend to be. (Why he ever thought they were cool is  _beyond_ him because they are  _obviously not_ and he almost feels like the boys are suffocating.) He tosses his God Tier pajamas in the now-empty card and finds a shirt to dry his face off with as he reenters the living room.

                “Water’s cold, huh?” Karkat chuckles and smirks up at him. “Heat’s probably been off for a while now.”

                “Thanks for the fuckin’  _warning_ jackass. I feel like I’m three inches shorter!”

                “What? No, you look to be just as tall as before.”

                “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

                Karkat chuckles briefly and sticks him with this  _look_  half between amusement and amazement. Dave quickly pulls the shirt on before sitting on the other side of him. There are only about six cards set to default and they’re set in three piles depending on type. There are another six on a small pad hooked up on his husktop, which is currently off of the walking-charger-grub (something that still freaks out and confuses Dave, even to this day) and resting in Karkat’s lap. He’s typing at it lazily, but log after log after log of fancy colors and unusual daedric letters are appearing with every keystroke.

                “You are  _really_ white, Dave.”

                “Well fuckin’  _duh_ , idiot.”

                “No…. I’ve seen Jade and Rose and John wearing those smaller water-outfits, y’know? They called them, uh… Swimming suits? Something like that. Their skin is darker than yours, but it still has lighter tones on it at some points, like where the girls’ outfit shifted slightly from the time they were in the water to the time I saw them.”

                “They have  _tans_ , Karkat.”

                “Why are you so angry over this?”

                “Let’s just fuckin’  _talk about something else_.”

                “Stri-!”

                “ _Talk about something else or I will rip your tongue out and shove it up your nook.”_

                Karkat’s mouth opens for a moment, as if he is going to press the issue, but instead it just shuts with a click and returns to looking at the monitor. Dave quietly pulls his knees up, leans against the beaten and battered sofa, and rests his forearms on his knees, staring at the ceiling.

                Then, quietly, about ten minutes and six cards later, Karkat says “you know, half of what it means to be a Knight in this game is that you have to learn how to trust your friends.”

                “You want to keep talking or can I just ignore you and pretend like you’ve shut your fuckin’ protein shoot? That’s what you call it, right?”

                “I find it ironic that even though  _you’re_  the one that hit God Tier, I’m the one that learned how to trust my friends… even as little as it was.”

                “Ok, fine, enlighten me  _oh learned one._ ”

                “I’m a fuckin’ mutant blood and I’m sitting next to you not even wearing a  _shirt_. A sweep and a half ago, that  _would_  have gotten me culled.”

                “Who has the same blood color as you because all humans have this blood color, oh  _Knight of Blood?_ ”

                Karkat shrugs at the moniker. “That’s beside the point. The first time the others saw you without your glasses on was two days ago as you sent them away.  _I_ barely saw your eye color then, though, and I was standing right beside you. You don’t want to talk about your skin, you're white as  _fuck_ , what’s the big  _deal_ with that?” Dave slaps him with the back of his hand. Karkat doesn’t reciprocate. “All I’m sayin’ is that you never learned how to trust them. You only taught them to trust you and shoveled off a bunch of BS their way when it came to who you  _are_.”

                “They had my back. I knew they were there!”

                “Trusting someone to have your back in a fight and trusting them not to tell someone your deepest, darkest secret are two  _very different_ things. I should know.”

                “What are you trying to get out of this, Vantas? Do you want me to say ‘oh, yeah, I’m actually a chick’ or something? Because it’s not going to happen. You sitting next to me and spouting this nonsense isn’t going to make me supposedly  _trust you_ the same way  _you_  trust me—evidently. I didn’t even fuckin’  _know_ you trusted me like that, but, y’know, whatever.”

                “All I’m saying is that maybe that’s why we’re here.”

                “Oh so me having a God damn feelings-fest with some random idiot I spent the last three fuckin’ years of Hell with is going to fix it? Horseshit. We’re stuck here and we’re  _not leaving_.”

                “I didn’t say it would fuckin’  _rescue us_ now did I? All I’m saying is that  _maybe_ that’s the reason why you’re stuck in this mess in the first place and one of us had to be the poor sap that got pulled along with it!”

                “Whatever the fuck floats your boat, Vantas. All I know and care about is the fact that there were only twelve places that that universe could cough up and there were fourteen of us. And you know what?” He stands immediately and turns to look at Karkat. “ _Your_ session had twelve trolls. And you know what beyond that?  _My_ session  _joined yours_  and then Dirk’s session  _joined yours_. So  _of course_ there would be only twelve  _because the game still thinks it’s_ your  _session!”_

                The door slams just behind him. Dave doesn’t even make it two steps before his back presses against the outside wall and he slips down it, hiding his face in his arms and knees. He sits there and hides as far away from the only other breathing being in this world for hundreds of miles.

                He comes back inside an hour and a half later, rubbing at the skin on his forearms, where the sleeves of the shirt are just bunched up enough to show it off to the empty space around them. Karkat is done with over half of the cards and another six are lying on the pack. Upon opening the door, a Space Breeze floats through and knocks the stacks over. Karkat curses as he looks away from the Chastity card in his hand.

                “I got it,” Dave mutters as he kneels down and starts sorting them back by color. He doesn’t see any that appear to be broken, but for all he knows, they might all be. He’s not good with gadgets or computers—that has always been Bro’s and Dirk’s forté. For him, he likes to stick to the good ol’ mechanical way of the human body. Anything that he can’t do himself probably doesn’t matter anyway. It took him three months to learn his first phone—it was even a TracFone.

                “I guess you make a good point,” Karkat mutters after he finishes. “The whole game-thinking-it’s-still-my-session thing…. But, I dunno. I think that SGrub is smarter than that. I think it knows that all three sessions were combined and that it wanted us to choose who we sent over to the new universe and who died here.” He snorts lightly. “We made a  _great fuckin’ choice_ letting Makara go, then.”

                “Hey, um, Karkat?”

                “I’m sitting right here, you don’t have to say my Gog damn name.”

                “If I have to be stuck here for the rest of my life with one person in all the universes combined… I’m”—he rubs at the back of his neck awkwardly and looks away—“ _glad_  that it, uh, it had to be you. I guess. For ironic reasons.”

                The Troll chuckles lightly. “I… yeah. It’s reciprocated.” Dave smirks lightheartedly. “So, are you going to tell me what the fuck is wrong with your view of yourself or are you going to make me worm it out of you?”

                “You have to prove to me how much I can trust you.”

                “You can-“

                “No, not through words. It’s just”—he takes a deep breath and plays with a card between his fingers. It scrapes against his leg and, rather belatedly, Dave realizes that his knees are up again and his arms are resting on them. He hadn’t even remembered doing that, but, ok, fine,  _maybe_  it’s a comfort position, like the fetal position or comfort food. “It’s just that I’ve never told anyone before, despite how obvious it is. And thinking about it is infuriating. So, well, we have the rest of forever here, right? Take your time. It’s one of those things that you can’t rush.”

                “Fine. Whatever. Hand me those cards. No, not one of those Chastity ones. I can’t get them open because of the stupid way that Kanaya fuckin’ made it so that random objects have to be inserted to make the key. If I reprogram them with objects in them, we might lose whatever is in it. They might be important, y’know?”

                They trade cards and Dave sorts them into the three types of Default Card in front of him as Karkat lays the next six empty cards on the pad between them, three on the top row and three on the bottom. He types into his husktop and leans back as the process starts up again. Dave takes the Chastity Card out of Karkat’s hand and frowns as he turns it over. There is a dark imprint on it, like it’s missing something, and Dave gets the feeling that he knows what it is and has even seen it recently.

                He stands up and pulls his belt off. Karkat makes a flustered sound and tries to demand what the  _fuck_ is wrong with him but it comes out as a weird garble between daedric sounds and English. Dave smirks down at him as he pulls his belt buckle off and replaces the belt around his hips. There’s really no need to since these skinny jeans won’t move anywhere, but, hey, why not? It’s better than hoarding up another CaptchaCard with something meaningless.

                He turns the belt buckle over in his hands. The front of it is of two red dragons, the bottom wingless and the top flying over him, only his wings are small and its head is turned to look at the bottom dragon (flying the opposite way). Dave has always thought that if there was an emotion in the dragons’ eyes, the one without wings would be happy but the one with would be envious or maybe even jealous. But there aren’t emotions because it’s a fuckin’  _belt buckle_  and it doesn’t matter.

                He presses the belt buckle against the card. Karkat’s husktop makes a horrible noise set only to be in nightmares and the song that your broken printer insists on playing whenever you turn it on. Dave looks up to see Karkat typing viciously, muttering the words “no, no, no” over and over again as if he was panicking.

                Under him, the card pops open and out fall two other cards. One is of a rainbow-striped color and the other is light blue, like the sign of Breath on John’s God Tier pajamas. He hands them to Karkat and shrugs as the other man curses and punches the ground beside him.

                “I just fucked up six motherfuckin’ cards, Gog damn it all.”

                “Well, I have another two for you to fuck around with, have at it.”

                Karkat cracks open one eye at him before looking to the cards. He visibly perks and takes the rainbow card. He hits a button on the side of his huskcomp and some sort of card reader pops out of what should probably be a CD reader. He sets it in and pushes the reader back in. The front screen of the huskcomp suddenly gains a small card in the corner, turning over and over again. Karkat grumbles as he pulls up a second command prompt. The rotating card stops with a happy face, waves a corner and starts to try and speak in whatever daedric language Karkat was taught. Six keystrokes later, the card’s mouth is moving but no words are coming out. He breezes through a bunch of windows before he smirks to himself and hands the same six cards he fried to Dave to sort.

                “Where’d you find the Card Repair?” Karkat asks after he grabs the next six empty cards and lays them out as before.

                “It was in one of Kanaya’s cards along with whatever this is.” He shrugs and hands him the blue one. Karkat winces at the color and Dave thinks that they thought of the same reference when they first saw it. Thinking about John and the others is still really hard.

                “It’s the Array Set Modus card. It’ll make programing all of those”—he points at the three piles of cards with a nod of his head, or maybe with his horn, Dave can’t really tell the difference anymore—“pretty easy. Make yourself useful and start emptying cards.”

                It takes another three hours to finish emptying all of them except for Kanaya’s (mostly because of Terezi’s ridiculous Scratch-n-Sniff Modus) and replace them with their default settings. Then Karkat captchalogues his huskcomp and breezes through resetting all of the cards by pressing the top edge of the Array Set Modus to the bottom edge of the card he’s changing. Dave sits back and takes the cards as they finish, placing what they could possibly use in the future as well as the tattered remains of plushies that should have been thrown out millennia ago. He puts the remains at the back of the deck and figures that they can probably find something to do with it. “The sun is coming up soon. We should hit the hay. Who’s sleeping where?” He yawns into the back of his hand.

                “I don’t care,” Karkat shrugs.

                “Well, who’s takin’ the bed and who’s takin’ the couch?”

                “I don’t see why we can’t sleep in the same fuckin’ bed, but whatever.”

                “We  _can’t_ because I’m  _not gay_.”

                “Us sleeping together doesn’t mean you’re gay, if you mean the same thing that John meant when he said the same thing.”

                “Actually, it pretty much means I’m gay.”

                “I meant  _in the same bed_ not, like,  _pailing_  or anything.”

                “Uhhuh, yes, I see what it is you’re trying to get at.”

                “Dave, it’s a relatively large bed. We won’t even be  _touching_ if we both sleep there. Plus, if one of us sleeps on the couch, it’s just unneeded ammunition against the other. I don’t see why we would need that. If you sleep there, you would hold it against me the next time we fight and vice versa. I’m going to be up for a few more hours to finish all of this, anyway, so why don’t you go knock yourself out so you don’t have to think about sleeping in the same bed as someone else. Unless you’re too much of a cluckbeast to do otherwise.”

                “ _I’m not_ \- fine, you know what? Fine. But I’m going to go sleep  _now_ so I don’t have to think of it later.”

                “That’s what I just said.”

                “Don’t remind me.”

                Dave shifts to his feet and goes back into the bedroom. The bed is dusty and he has to beat the thin layer out of it before he can lie down and wriggle under the blanket. He rolls so that his back is to the other side of the bed and carefully removes his glasses. It doesn’t take long to fall asleep.

                He wakes a few different times that day. The first time, he rolls over to see Karkat in the throes of a bad nightmare and nudges him until he wakes up. Karkat sits straight up and swings his feet over onto the ground. Then, he puts his forehead in his hands and shakes violently. The shaking slows after about ten minutes and Karkat sighs as he mutters an apology for waking him up. Dave pretends like he doesn’t hear it and rolls back over to sleep. He tells himself that the only reason he is still awake is because he wants to make sure that he’s ok, like any sensible knight would.

                The second time he wakes up probably takes place about an hour and a half later, maybe less. Karkat is sitting up against the headboard of the bed, staring off into space. The black bags under his eyes have gotten worse since the other day. “You should sleep,” Dave whispers into the side of his pillow.

                “Are you crying, Strider?”

                “The sun is too damn bright,” he offers up and hides his head under the pillow. The pain in his eyes slowly dwindles away to bearable as Karkat scoots down the bed until he’s lying.

                The third time he wakes up, it’s because Karkat is lightly shaking in his sleep  _again_ , only his “sleep” appears to be synonymous with “Dave’s chest”. He has one arm over Karkat’s side, pressing him close and Karkat’s arm is around Dave’s side. It looks to him like the shaking is slowing, though, and Karkat isn’t waking. Dave likes to think that he pushes him off before falling back asleep, but he knows otherwise.

                The last time he wakes is after the sun as gone back down and it’s night again, around the time that Dave would be getting up anyway. Karkat is the little spoon and his fingers are twitching against Dave’s wrist, as if he’s debating whether or not he should get up and risk waking him. Dave’s nose is pressed against Karkat’s neck, so he can feel the tiny resting pulse right there. He… doesn’t smell all  _that_ bad, he decides.

                He rips his hand away from Karkat and shoves his head under the pillow again, muttering a small apology and the excuse that he usually isn’t clingy when he sleeps.

                He doesn’t feel Karkat move on the other side of the bed for about ten minutes before he lifts the pillow up again.

                “Is it normal for Human faces to color like that when they’re embarrassed? You’re red as a, how did Jade put it? Red as a ‘ _potato_ ’ and—“             

                “Tomato.”

                “Red as a tomato and the color is sinking down past your shoulders.”

                “No, Karkat.” He hisses. “No it’s not normal  _at all_. Don’t mention it again.”

                “…and, it’s um… I woke up because I was having another nightmare and I, uh… I was lying in your chest. So it’s probably my fault anyway. Don’t be sorry. Let’s just not mention this anymore.”

                “I can do that.”

                Neither of them mention it again. 


	3. Odd Glasses and Future Plans

                They don’t stick around long. He and Karkat busy themselves making it look like they were never at the house (just in case someone comes for a look), captchalogue the food and water in the fridge with the empty cards and leave. There isn’t much in the first place, so it only takes up three Array Type Modus cards. Then, they walk.

                The walking is probably the most boring part of it all. There is no reason to keep going  _on_ and  _on_ and  _on_. They both know that any sensible person out there would have never walked this far. After abandoning their entire lives (or did their lives abandon them? No, they abandoned their friends by tricking them, obviously… right?), most people would stick around and stay near the House that they left from, even if it meant starving and wasting away. He and Karkat must just be insane.

                The majority of the walk is in silence. At some points in time, its pressing silence where neither one of them knows what to say. At other times, it’s a nice, comfortable one where neither of them feel compelled to break it. Occasionally, they have to beat the shit out of some asteroid-blobs come to eat them like zombies in Florida, but they bow down quickly and the boys could always use more grist—especially now that they have three grist gutters, though with their high ranking levels they can hold a lot of grist anyway.

                Slowly, ever so slowly, they begin to have small conversations, like trying to figure out what to eat as they look for their next squat-house, or to pass a water bottle to the other. Then there are times when they sit to rest before jumping to the next asteroid, because that part is never fun and they both end up sore with aching backs afterward. You would have to be a boneless-blob of spacegunk to not get hurt from it.

                All in all, everything adds up to one thing: Karkat is acting  _weird_.

                Dave braces himself for changing gravity fields and curls into the fetal position just as impact is made. He sees Karkat do the same out of the corner of his eye. Their grunts intermingle as their backs hit the new asteroid. Dave doesn’t move far, opting instead to just lay his legs down and stay on his back. Everything hurts.

                “How come you haven’t been flipping your shit at every little thing?”

                Karkat makes a noise in the back of his throat and Dave repeats the question, just a little louder. “I figure that there’s no reason to be mad over every little thing anymore. It’s a useless waste of energy. Besides, you’ve seen how I’ve been fighting since the others left. I’ve actually gotten a little better. I should have stopped being pissed at everything sweeps ago.”

                “Why were you pissed?”

                “Crabdad—my lusus—was a crabby piece of shit. It was contagious. And then I started getting crabby at my schoolhive to keep kids away from me. I was that one kid you always see away from the playing equipment because he doesn’t want to get hurt. It was a lowblood school, so of course everyone had low-class, but I could get killed for even getting one bruise.”

                “S’why you always wear that turtleneck, long-sleeve shirt.”

                “Mmhmm, precisely. It just kept people away from me so that I wouldn’t get killed. Then those eleven fuck-for-nothings”—he gestures his hand at the sky, rolling it around, and Dave knows that he’s talking about his Troll friends and that they aren’t “fuck-for-nothings” because they’re the only people to accept Karkat for what he is. It’s how he feels about his friends—“decided that the hemospectrum didn’t matter. And they were idiots and nearly got themselves killed to save me.”

                “Huh?”

                “It’s a long story from a long time ago. I don’t want to talk about it.”

                “I thought that they didn’t know your blood color before the game started.”

                “They didn’t. They didn’t know why I was being attacked, just that I was. And they helped. But, like I said. I’d rather not talk about it.”

                Dave remains silent for a moment before he sighs. “There’s a war goin’ on back home. Or, there was, before everything went to Hell.”

                “What over?”

                “Some idiots were tired of being mistreated and rose up. Like all wars.”

                “Who were the idiots?”

                “Just some stupid albinos. It’s not a big deal. Let’s get going. The sun is going to rise soon and we need to at least find some shelter.”

                Karkat nods and groans as he is forced to stand up again. This is the sixth asteroid they have jumped to in the past night and everything is pretty sore from the might-as-well-be-constant gravity changes. “What was the point of telling me about that war?”

                “You told me something about your past. I told you something about mine. Give an’ take.”

                “Did the war influence you a lot?”

                “Do you mean ‘you’ as in ‘me’ or ‘you’ as in ‘the four of us’?”

                “Four of you, I suppose.”

                “Jade, John and Rose lost a lot of their close friends and family to the war. It’s been going on for over twenty years now, longer than any other world war has ever lasted. The three of them hate albinos, as they very well should, but it didn’t influence them all that much. The effects on the US were only that people were losing those that went into the war, since we’re such large bigots that we can’t be bothered to ration or anything.”

                “And you?”

                “Yeah. It fucked me up a lot.” Dave knows that Karkat stops walking, even as he keeps going. “C’mon, we don’t have long.”

                “Right.”

                They make shelter under the remnants of what appears to have been a tree at some point. It’s burnt to a crisp and barely large enough to break down and make a small teepee-like building. They cover it with Dave’s cape from his God Tier pajamas and settle in to sleep. It’s not very restful and they both wake up several times that night before they, reluctantly and hesitantly, curl up next to each other. When Karkat next wakes, he finds that Dave is peacefully asleep, his glasses are still off and their noses are pressed together. Dave’s hand is on Karkat’s shoulder and his hand is on Dave’s waist. It’s comfortable to be here.

                 _Crack_.

                Shit. He sits up to go see what the sound was, but recoils when a bit of the sunlight hits his eyes. The sound outside gets louder. He  _has_ to do something! Strider is going to kill him, but… He takes his sunglasses, slips them on his own face and grabs his scythes.

                More of the black blobs of spacegunk have found them. One lunges at Karkat. He slices it in half. Or… he thinks he does. It falls to either side, then reforms. And the others reform with it. And with it. Larger and larger it grows until it’s the size of a  _hive_. A rather  _large hive_ , that of probably a  _high blood hive_. And it has arms.

                Fucking great.

                He twists and knocks the arm away. Blinding pain explodes in his back as he is thrown down. The other arm knocked him. Fuck, how the hell can Strider even fight with these motherfucking glasses on? Everything is black! He can’t even see the spacegunk through them and it’s the middle of the day! He rolls onto his feet and swings, taking out a leg.

                “Vantas, you better have my glasses and not that thing you’re attempting to fight.”

                He squints his eyes at Dave. He can barely see him standing up in front of the temporary-hive-lodgings they made hours ago, but he’s there. In his hands, he has the dark outline of a black blade that is hopefully Dirk’s unbreakable katana. Slowly, he points it up at the blob. He looks like Dirk, too, now that everything is obscured and it’s hard to tell white from black.

                “Can you even fight without your glasses, Strider?”

                “I can fight better than you can.”

                And, simple as that, they leap into action. The blob falls before them and, soon enough, the grist joins the rest in the gutter. He and Dave go back into the temporary-hive-lodgings and he removes the glasses, handing them to Dave. It’s about right then that he realizes that Dave’s eyes are closed, as if he can’t see without the glasses. Dave doesn’t replace them, though, instead opting to take them from him, flop down on the ground and place them back where they were before. Karkat joins him on the ground.

                “So,” Dave chuckles at last. “How blind were you?”

                “How do you even see with those things? It’s the middle of the day and I still couldn’t see shit!”

                “I can’t see shit without them.” He shrugs. “I guess we were both screwed, huh?”

                “Whatever…. Just go back to sleep.”

                Karkat rolls away from him. Dave, eventually, rolls over and wraps his arm around Karkat’s side. He, hesitantly, wraps his hand around Dave’s wrist and pillows his head on his arm. “I thought you weren’t gay, Dave.”

                “It’s cold, damn it. I fuckin’ grew up in Texas, how the hell could I like the cold?”

                Karkat doesn’t press the issue. Instead, he lets Dave bury his nose into the back of his neck and sleep.

                 _He’s young, no older that nine? Eight? Covered in mud and blood in some sick, twisted remake of We Will Rock You. His school books and papers are all over the street, slowly getting more and more soaked through with wet sediment and dark goop. It’ll cost an arm and a leg to replace that. His eyes are squeezed shut and his Browlines are in the bully’s hands. One of the bullies’ hands, at least. Maybe all three? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. All he wants to do is curl into a tighter ball and sob. He curls into a ball, but Striders don’t cry, that’s what dad says, so he won’t cry, no, not at all. Another kick hits him, hard, in the gut and he cries out._

                 _“Shut the fuck up,” one of the kids spits—he’s probably sixteen, so maybe his parents let him use those words, because dad doesn’t let him use those words just like he doesn’t. “You’re a fucking_ thing _, get used to this. We were nice and let you keep your virginity for now, kid. You’re even worse than a dog.” Somewhere far away, glass shatters. Dave flinches at the thought that his dad is going to have to replace those again. “So stay out of our fuckin’ way, damn it. And if my dog wants to pee on you, you better let it.” There’s a small dog yap, too. “Do you understand?_ Do you fucking understand you worthless waste of space _?”_

_Dave nods shakily and mutters a sharp apology for getting in their way. The bullies chuckle, but make approving sounds to it. The dog bites his ankle, then walks away, leaving him to bleed. Dave inches backward, eyes closed as tight as they can be, then more, and keeps going backward until his back hits the wall. He thinks that maybe, if he was stupid, he could have inched into the street and gotten run over. He thinks that if dad hadn’t taught him how to tell where he is by just listening, he could be in that street right now and everything could be over in this very instant. That’s all he wants is for it to be over._

_He hears someone picking up textbooks, making noises in the back of their throat, the rustle of paper, the zip of his backpack being done up, then he hears whoever it is sit beside him. He feels their arm wrap around his shoulders and pull him against his side. He can tell it’s his dad from just the smell.   “Are you going to be ok, Dave?” He asks._

_“I’m sorry I made you come out here just to do this, dad,” Dave whispers. He finds he’s sorry a lot. Last time, he had been sorry because he had picked up a penny that the other guys wanted and the bullies said he got in their way of getting it. The dog was just a stander-by for a while there. He doesn’t really like dogs, though. He likes cats. He likes cats because they’re small, tender, and like to nuzzle up to you without slobbering all over your face. He thinks he’ll get a cat when he’s older. Or, maybe, someone like a cat! That would be cool! Someone who is_ like  _a cat but isn’t one! Maybe even have the word “cat” somewhere in his name! Her name, he means, oops! But dad likes guys, too, so there’s nothing wrong with that! Nothing at all!_

_“Now I know something is wrong, kid. You haven’t called me ‘dad’ since you were six. What happened? Which loser broke your glasses?”_

_He sniffles and wipes at his face with his sleeve, but he knows that he wasn’t crying earlier, so it just chafes his skin. He would rub it raw except that Bro (because he’s not dad, right? He’s his Bro! He’s too cool to be dad!) reaches up and stills his hands, wiping at the corners of his eyes gently until Dave nods. Bro knows about his OCD and his inability to do something without counting to a certain number. He’s understanding about it, too, even if it is really high._

_“Here you go, lil’ bro,” Bro chuckles and slips his glasses onto Dave’s face. Dave blinks his eyes open and smiles seeing the soft amber glow of eyes staring up at him. “C’mon. We’ll go to the park and get some ice cream on the way home, but you gotta do somethin’ for me, first, squirt.”_

_“What?”_

_Bro holds his hands out and stands up. Dave takes them as he realizes that Bro has his backpack slung over the back of one of his shoulders. He stands on his feet shakily and only releases one of Bro’s hands. “You gotta stand strong against those idiots. They’re full of themselves in all the bad ways.”_

_“Th-they’re shitstains… r-right?”_

_“As much as I hate you using those words, yes, Dave, they are shitstains.”_

_Dave smiles gently and leans against Bro’s side, holding his hand as they walk to the park. It’s not far from where Dave had the shit beat into him and it’s not far from the highrise either. Dave gets strawberry because the person selling it has a really light, almost invisible-pink version of it that doesn’t taste too sweet and Bro gets vanilla because it “reminds me of you, Dave”. Dave turns his nose up and says that the comment could be taken really wrong out of context. Bro noogies the top of his head and they walk home together._

                Dave wakes slowly and blinks small tears away as he slowly realizes that his face is pillowed inside something moving. He’s shaking lightly in Karkat’s chest, but his arms are around him tight enough to make everything minimal. Ever-so-slowly, Dave stops shaking and instead clenches his fingers in Karkat’s shirt. Karkat’s hands twitch on his back and he’s worried that the other is awake for a moment. Then, the movement ends and Dave lets out a gentle sigh. He rolls out of the way, pulls his sunglasses on and carefully goes to check around the teepee. Nothing is around, so he’s safe to move on.

                Now that the sun has set again and the moons have risen, he is safe to start deconstructing the teepee. He captchalogues his cape first, then starts to take the sticks down, careful not to thwack Karkat in the process (by which he means: he obviously wakes the other boy up by letting five or six of the sticks land on top of his head and maybe two or three hit his legs, perhaps? Hmmm? Who knows? [They did.]). Karkat doesn’t seem to appreciate it, but he pushes the sticks off with a glare and punches the back of Dave’s shoulder as retribution.

                They start walking again.

                “It’s too fuckin’ quiet on this place,” Karkat eventually groans. He lifts his arms above his head and pops his shoulders. Dave rubs at the crick in his neck. “Harley and the others made everything so loud. I just got used to it.”

                “Yeah… same here.”

                “…. Have you ever, uh… what’s the word again? Have you ever been in love?”

                “Why the fuck would you suddenly ask that?”

                Karkat shrugs. “Like I said, it’s too fuckin’ quiet around here. Then, I mentioned Harley. I always thought there was something red going on between you two. So have you?” Dave can tell that he’s really trying hard not to think about Terezi right now and the “red infidelity” that Dave could have possibly committed had he actually been “ _flushed”_ for either of the women.

                “Do we  _have_ to talk about this?”

                “Do you have something better to talk about?”

                “…yeah I guess there was one time where I fancied myself someone.” He shrugs off the blush easily and rubs the back of his neck again, looking away. “It was a long time ago and I don’t like thinking about it. It was from back when I was stupid and didn’t understand the world around me. Nothing important. Now you’re turn. Ever think you were flushed for someone?”

                “Other than Terezi? No. But, at the same time, I’ve never really let myself get close to anyone.”

                “It’s ironic.”

                “ _What_ the  _fuck_ could  _possibly_ make this  _fucking ironic, Strider_? Oh wait  _everything to you is ironic because,_ ironically _, you can’t use the word correctly!”_

                “We both isolated ourselves from people growing up, but you tried to keep yourself away from others and I craved having friends so much that I let myself get the piss beat out of me until I was sobbing for them to stop. It’s _ironic_ that, as you said, you’re the one that learned to trust people and I can’t quite seem to find it in me to let go of my lone-wolf lifestyle, even after hitting God Tier. And, you know what? I rather like it like that. And, by the way,  _yes_ I do know how to use the word ‘ _ironic’_ correctly. The whole reason I don’t is because that’s the finest  _irony_ there is out there.”

                Karkat flaps his lips at the back of his skull until he realizes that he is starting to fall behind and catches up. They break a few hours later for “lunch”, eating the last of the food they got from the squat-house.

                “Why would you let someone do that to you?” Karkat finally asks halfway between his second and third bite of a sandwich.

                Dave doesn’t have to be reminded of what they were talking about. “Humans are social animals. Without friends, we go crazy.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Albinos had a lot of injustices thrown at them before and even during the war. Many of them were used as slaves or killed when they were infants for their bones, believing them to be magic. And those that weren’t killed at birth became sex-slaves for entire villages and tribes in some parts of Africa. Worst of all, there weren’t many people around who could understand them until the war began. They made up camp on some uncharted islands in the Atlantic Ocean. For thousands of years, albinos were treated as something less than human because of a genetic defect, but they finally made a lot of friends. It may have been through war, but it still got them friends.”

                “So are you for or against the war?”

                “I’m… for the reasons that the war took place. I’m against how long it was going on and how many people were lost because of it.”

                “Are you for or against the war. It’s not a simple question, Strider. Don’t brush it off like it is. You can’t be half for-half against it. That tactic may work in board games and fake chores, but in war, it’s all in or all out.”

                “Even knowing who all died?”

                “Yes.”

                “Even knowing that Jade’s parents both died during it  _and_ Rose’s dad and John’s mom died?”

                “Yes.”

                “…then… then yeah. Yeah, I… I guess I’m for the war.”

                “Why?”

                “Because I understand why they needed it.”

                “Why did they need it?”

                Dave shakes his head lightly and gets ready to take a bite. “You wouldn’t understand.”

                “What makes you say that?”

                “….there is a lot, as a Troll, that you don’t have to correlate with Humans. Vice-versa. I mean, we don’t have a hemospectrum, after all.”

                “But you have castes sometimes and lately it’s been made out of the amount of money a family has.”

                “This is true, but we can’t be culled for being poor.”

                “You might as well be.”

                “Let’s just… change the topic. I don’t want to talk about the war anymore.”

                Karkat shrugs and takes another bite. At last, he finally asks, “how do you see through those glasses?”

                He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s too bright to see without them.”

                “It’s nearly fucking pitch black out here.”

                “It’s too bright to see without them, Vantas.”

                “You’re fuckin’ blind with them on, aren’t you? Don’t deny it, I know you are.”

                “I would be blind if I took them off.”

                “So what you’re saying is that your eyes are  _so sensitive_ that if you even try to take those off, you’ll be blind. Like a Troll looking at the Alternian sun.”

                “Somewhat. It’s not permanent. I would just have to put something on that blocked out nearly all of the light there is.”

                “Stop bullshitting me, Dave.”

                “Photophobia, definition: abnormal or extreme sensitivity to light, usually symptomatic of other ocular disorders or diseases. Photalgia, definition: pain in the eye resulting from exposure to bright light. Photophobia is a symptom of excessive sensitivity to light and the aversion to sunlight or well-lit places often due to photalgia. In ordinary medical terms, photophobia is not a morbid fear nor is it a phobia, but an experience of photalgia strong enough to deter one or more individuals from regular amounts of light.”

                “What? Did you just type in a random word and read everything on a website or something?”

                “You’re not the first person I’ve had to explain it to.”

                “So, what you’re telling me is, you’ve got this weird-as-Hell medical condition that makes it so that miniscule amounts of light do it for you, but normal amounts hurt.” Dave hums in agreement. “You’re weird as fuck.”

                “You’ve got candy-red blood and  _you’re_ calling  _me_ weird?”

                Karkat’s lips flap for a while before he stands up, calls him a fucking asshole in more than just English and stomps away, telling him not to follow. The back of Dave’s head hits a crater and he hisses in pain. He doesn’t want to finish the rest of his sandwich, but he forces himself to anyway. He isn’t sure when he’ll eat next. He needs the energy ready-made if he has to fight.

                Dave curls his knees to his chest and hopes that Karkat will return after that underhanded Falcon Punch to the family jewels. Or, uh, the bonebulge? He isn’t sure if that makes sense at all. He isn’t much sure of anything anymore.

                Dave almost wants to tell him about the bullies and the fucking bastards that beat the piss out of him when he was a kid. He almost wants to tell him everything there is to know about anything. He knows he won’t and that may be why he was so volatile….

                But fuck him sideways up the ass if he isn’t beating himself up on the inside for going there.

                Dave still hasn’t moved, three hours later, when Karkat finally returns. One of his hands is cut up and the other is still bleeding, making the red coil down his fingers like thick springs and drip down onto the ground. There’s a smear of blood on his cheek and one of his eyes has a scratch over it. Dave feels worse than Karkat looks, though, and pretends like he doesn’t notice the small red smears under the corners of his eyes. He stands to meet him and Karkat grunts at him, muttering that they better get walking if they want to find another house to squat in.

                So they start walking, only Dave falls a step or two behind, letting Karkat lead the way. Karkat notices it. There are twitches in his shoulders and his fingers tend to smooth a lock next to his ear back quite a lot before Karkat sighs and moves aside. Dave catches up, accepting the forgiveness to his unspoken apology. Karkat still looks like shit, though, and Dave still feels worse than he looks.

                They jump two more asteroids before they decide that their bodies can’t survive too many more gravity changes for the next few days. They scour the entire asteroid until they come across an awkwardly placed building. There are no inhabitants and the building is smaller than the last one, the sitting room being about half of the others’ size. The furniture seems to be in the same sort of disarray, but at least the stove isn’t ash in this place.

                Dave immediately goes into the bathroom to check the water temperature on the excuse that Karkat got it last time. The water—thank any and every God available to him and those that aren’t (that feels awkward because, technically, isn’t Karkat one of his gods, too?)—actually has a temperature other than  _cold_  and  _liquid ice_. He changes into a different set of clothes that DaveSprite has, yet again, magically managed to create out of thin air. It’s another pair of skinny jeans and a tank top with a light jacket, to be honest. He checks for blemishes in the mirror, finds two near his hairline, but his hair is just long enough now to cover it. Then, he notices the small stubble on his jaw and around his mouth.  _Fuck yeah_ facial hair! He grins to himself, rubs his hands on it like the dork he pretends he isn’t and chuckles to himself before calming down again.

                He exits the bathroom to find Karkat sprawled out on the living room floor. His eyebrows are pinched in pain, but Dave pretends not to notice that as he says, jokingly ordering, “go take your shower before the water cools.”

                “The water is hot?”

                “Not hot, but warmer than the last place.”

                Karkat is off his back in nearly the split second it takes to say “place”. He’s through the bathroom door almost twice as quickly as that and Dave hears the shower come on a little later. Dave falls backwards, lands on his back and stays there. It feels so good. To have something hard  _and flat_ under him after sleeping on the asteroid rock and the gravity shifts. His back feels like heaven, but at the same time he’s so flexible he can put both of his legs behind his neck and still be comfortable. He can’t imagine what kind of pain Karkat must be in, being that his muscles aren’t limber enough to do the same things he has.

                ….

                Yes, he will admit that the whole putting-both-of-his-legs-behind-his-neck  _does_ put him in quite the position and he’s decided that he….

                Just know that he has fun.

                ….

                That sums that topic up.

                Dave pushes the thought of his sexual encounters away and waits for Karkat to get out of the shower. He doesn’t have to wait long, though, and the other emerges wearing a pair of pants slung low on his hips and with his shirt drying his face off. Yet again, water drips onto his body, making long streaks between his muscles, pushing them into the fore-front of his mind.

                (Dave has to remind himself again how he was an idiot when he was a kid, nothing more, nothing less, obviously.)

                Karkat lies down on his back, groans halfway and then sighs in relief. Dave listens to him shift his back until it pops, then pops the other side, but he knows that’s not the kind of relief he’s looking for. He tells Karkat to roll over. The Troll sticks him with an odd look, turns him down, and Dave pushes himself up onto his elbow, repeating it until Karkat finally does, indeed, roll over.

                Then he reaches forward, presses his thumbs on top of a knot and _pushes_. Karkat’s nails dig into the carpet, he hisses and groans simultaneously and Dave can feel Karkat’s legs twitching under where he straddled his hips.

                Because he was a stupid kid, that’s why he’s straddling them.

                That doesn’t even make sense, even to him, who knows that part of his story.

                Karkat hisses out another breath as he makes a short turn with his thumbs, rolling the knot under them in small circles first. Dave knows that it’s slightly more painful than what it normally would be due to their obvious lack of lotions or  _anything_ to lessen the friction, but he thinks that, after just a quick feel with the sides of his fingers, Karkat really needs this. Plus, if Karkat really pushes the matter, it’s an apology for going too far earlier. He doubts Karkat will press it, though, and hopes he’ll take it as the apology it isn’t.

                Karkat’s breathing is ragged after only three knots are out of his back. His eyebrows are pinched and he is breathing through his mouth. His shoulders are lifting at unequal fluctuations and Dave suspects this is doing  _a lot_  to help the pain. He and Karkat are a lot alike in that way; he could be chopped nearly in half, bleeding, on his death bed, never to rise to God Tier again, the kind of pain that could kill lesser men, look into someone’s eyes and say “I’m fine”. The two of them would say it with the kind of conviction that would make someone truly doubt if they’re in pain. Perhaps they  _are_ fine, the people would think.

                Dave works every knot out of his back until his hands ache and Karkat is actually making small purring noises in the back of his throat. He’s obviously trying to keep the sound quiet, so he is sure to file it away for later abuse. He does a last once-over just to make sure there are no more knots, massages the back of his neck for a second and then gets off of him, lying on his back.

                “Despite having showered,” Dave complains, “I still smell like space rock.”

                “ _Everything_ smells like space rock, not just you, Strider. Even the _water_ smells like space rock.” Dave chuckles and rolls his head over to see Karkat. His fingers are still twitching in the carpet and his eyes are shut, but the lingering marks of a smile are edged around his lips. He looks like a man who just had a  _very_ pleasurable back massage. Dave doesn’t personally think he’s any good, but he knows that Bro used to appreciate them whenever he gave them to him. Evidently, so does Karkat.

                Dave shuts his eyes, takes his glasses off and stretches out on the floor.

                “So, you said that you pitied someone when you were younger,” Karkat mutters at last. “There a story behind that or am I barking at an invisible meowbeast?”

                “Not much of one. I was nine so, like, I dunno, four sweeps and then some? There was someone who was nice to me. I was fuckin’  _nine_ , of  _course_ I clung to them.”

                “You thought you pitied someone when you were  _two_?”

                “Ah, no, that’s when we met and my infatuation was kind-of, you know, starting? Then a few years passed, we became really good friends and… we started playing a stupid game and I swore that I would not let anyone kill them.”

                “Which one of your friends? Jade or Rose?”

                He shrugs his shoulders. “Does it really matter? Either way, back in my world, I wasn’t allowed to love people. I wasn’t allowed to get married or anything. It would be a huge hit  _against_ me if I even managed to live long enough to get to sixteen and have sex. Eighteen? Yeah fuckin’ right, I’d’a been dead long before then.”

                “Dude.”

                “Yeah?”

                “That fuckin’  _sucks_. I mean, I know I could have been culled for my blood color, but if I wanted to pity someone and they decided that they wanted to pity me back, I had every  _right_ to. No one was takin’ that away or anything.”

                “Don’t have to tell me,” Dave snorts and shrugs, then rolls over and lays on his front. His eyes are still shut, so he can’t tell if Karkat is looking at him yet or if he’s looked away yet. (He can’t see Karkat’s look of utter astonishment, completely out-of-character, shown on his face or the way that his lips are quirked up. Perhaps even in a pitiful way, though not Troll pity, not by far—merely Human pity.) “ _I’m_ the fuckin’ one who lived through it.” They fall silent for a long time, lying side-by-side and doing absolutely  _nothing_ other than breathing. Maybe half an hour? More? It’s hard for Dave to believe, but being next to Karkat is comforting. At the same time, Karkat is also the last of the intelligent beings free to roam inside of The Game. Of course he would be comforted. (He just doesn’t want to be alone  _all over again_.) “You remember how I reacted when Rose said that with our three sessions combined we could probably make a new universe, right?”

                “How could I fuckin’  _forget_? You were the only one  _all for it_ , even as she listed off the complications and the bullshit that could have gotten us all _killed_. You were all like ‘yeah don’t care, let’s do this shit’ and being the regular fuck-all you are!”

                “Is it wrong that almost the entire reason why I was excited is because I wanted to maybe, you know, live in a world where it would be legal _and_ socially acceptable for me to be with someone?”

                Karkat doesn’t immediately answer. He doesn’t  _immediately_ do anything. But, then, slowly, Dave feels his hand curl around his wrist. He feels him roll his hand over so that the palm is open to the ceiling. He feels two things slip into his hand, one of which is probably his sunglasses, the other he can’t tell without seeing. But his touch is what gets to him. His touch is  _soft_. He has sharp-edged, blunt-nails as if he rips at them when he’s bored and his skin, in general, is rough with calluses added on top of that, but his touch is soft and not at all forceful.

                “What’s wrong is that SGrub stole that away from you, Dave. Nothing else.” It’s not the first time that Karkat has called him by his first name but, like the other times, it’s just as intimate and Dave takes it differently to heart. If he had said Strider, it would have been indisputable fact, but since he used his first name, Dave knows it’s his opinion too. It’s  _weird_ , though, that after  _all these years_ there is finally someone who exists who doesn’t  _care_ that he’s  _less than Human_. Karkat just sees him for who he is, not what he is, and he doubts that him knowing  _what he is_ would make him change his mind. But at the same time, he knows he can’t tell him. “We all had our reasons for wanting this new world, this new universe, and they were all just as conceited as yours sounds to the naked auricular sponge clot, but in all honesty most of them were worse.”

                “Why did you want the new universe?”

                “I…” He falls off with a sigh and Dave slips his glasses back onto his face. Karkat is seated up, leaning against the sofa with his back and looking at a far wall. He has this look to his face, like he’s reliving of something rather than thinking about it. “I had two reasons.”

                “Which were?”

                “I… wanted to be equal to the other Trolls, not lesser.”

                “They don’t think you’re lesser to them, though.”

                “None them that have the stupid notion of the hemospectrum crammed into the back of their heads because they were running from it their entire lives.” Dave knows the feeling. He knows the thought of running from the truth for years and years until it’s engrained so far into the back of his head that he’s constantly on the lookout—and when it finally doesn’t matter to everyone around him, it matters to him the most. If he lost the part of him that has been running from it for so long, would he still be  _him_?

                “What else?”

                “I… I wanted the others to be happy.”

                Dave sits up beside him and tips his head back, pretending to stare at the ceiling. “I hope they’re happy, wherever they are.”

                “Are you kidding? They’re fucking pissed at us.”

                “ _Duh_ ,” Dave laughs. “But they can’t spend the rest of their lives mad at us. They’ll understand in a few years.” He smiles gently, forlornly, and he truly hopes that wherever they are in the next universe, they are  _happy_ and not plagued by the thought of the people that forced them forward without their consent. He thinks of Rose and her suicide plan to “destroy” the Green Sun. He hopes she wouldn’t think of it as the same thing. “If there’s a God, I would pray to him to make sure they’re happy. After everything we went through, they deserve it.”

                “I happen to be sitting right next to you, asshat, and how the fuck would I help?”

                Dave tries.

                He tries so hard.

                He tries so hard that the muscles in his jaw lock up.

                But the hairbreadth of a laugh escapes him and that is  _all it takes_ for the cascade to fall out of him. He curls his knees to his shoulders and hangs onto his gut as he laughs. He can feel Karkat giving him the weirdest look in the history of weird looks to his side, which makes the laughing worse and worse. He knows that when Karkat finally snorts and chuckles, too, it’s because of Dave’s ridiculous guffaws. He’s gasping for breath between the barrel-rolls of laughter until he manages to gasp out “it’s not even that funny, why am I still laughing? Why are  _you_ laughing?” And laughs again.

                Karkat snorts again and shrugs his shoulders. “You’re fucking _ridiculous_ when you laugh.  _You_ started it. I’m laughing at you laughing!”

                “I’m laughing at you laughing!”

                Karkat’s head tips back and Dave’s tips forward until his forehead is pressed into his knees. He gasps for breath. Karkat does the same. It takes him longer to find his, though, so much so that he feels Karkat’s hand on the back of his neck. All it does it rest there. Dave feels like it does so much more. It’s pushing the weight of suckerpunching the others in the balls away, pushing the weight of what was once his  _world_ off his shoulders. He doesn’t want to be alone.

                And, he  _isn’t_.

                “I don’t even know what was so funny,” Dave admits. Karkat chuckles and shrugs.

                “What were we talking about before your laugh fest?”

                “I don’t remember.” He wheezes gently and winces as he lowers his legs, stretching them out. “But we should figure out where it is we’re going soon.”

                “Do we have to have a destination in mind?”

                “We need to pick ourselves up, man. All of the enemies are dead or just don’t give a fuck anymore. We did our part in fate and made it kiss our asses when we threw the others into our world. I would rather even settle down in a small town of carapaces and start  _some_ semblance of a life than do _nothing_ for the rest of mine.”

                “…I guess so.” Then, he squeezes Dave’s neck and stands. He goes to raid the kitchen. He pauses momentarily to look out a window Dave can only see the sill to and returns with water as well as some sort of burrito. Dave is honestly a little tired of all of the sandwiches, but beggars can’t be choosers. “You can see Derse out the window over there.”

                “Really?”

                “Mmhmm. We must be closer than I thought.”

                “Well, we’re in the asteroid belt just outside of Derse, so I guess that could make sense, but I didn’t realize that we could  _see_ it.”

                “It’s still pretty far, but  _damn_ if it’s not purple. Bright purple. Neon purple. Like Dirk’s pajamas were first time we met him.”

                Dave whistles. “Pretty damn purple, man. Y’know, me bein’ a Prospit dreamer an’ all, I never would have thought it’s  _that_ purple.” He deadpans. Karkat gives him a bad look. Dave takes a bite of his burrito.

                “You have a weird laugh.”

                “Thanks, ass,” he snorts. “Don’t you think there  _might_ be a reason I don’t laugh? Like, I don’t know, it’s a gross laugh?”

                “It’s not  _gross!_ ” Karkat recoils like Dave had insulted  _him_  for something stupid. He levels the troll a weird look and takes another bite. “It’s just… different.”

                “Different.”

                “Yeah. Happy. I guess.”

                He arches one long, thin, white line over the rim of his glasses.

                “I spent more time watching John than I did you. Y’know, watched him grow up, that sort’a thing. I didn’t pay you much mind until you were five an’ a half or six years, but there were  _other_ times, like when you were  _barely_ touching five that I saw. You laughed a lot when you were a kid, right?”

                “I guess. I was just a regular kid with a hilarious brother, that’s all.”

                “But when you laughed it didn’t sound like that.”

                “How d’ya mean?”

                “I  _mean,_ well, I mean how it sounds. The laugh you just had right now and the one you would laugh with as a kid are a lot different—or maybe I just didn’t hear a normal laugh when you were younger. Either way, the one you’re currently clutching your stomach for is more joyful than any of the ones I heard before. Once you hit eleven you started laughing through your nose like the condescending prick you are, but  _before_  that… the laugh just sounded sad, no matter how loud it got.”

                “How does a laugh sound  _sad_?”

                “Laughter takes on the emotions of whoever is laughing. If you’re sad inside but forcing the laugh, the laugh sounds sad.”

                “Wow. You have enlightened me today, Doctor Vantas. You’re a true miracle worker in the psychoanalytical mindset! I never would have thought any of that! When I was a child, I often dreamt of a dog biting my arm, what do you think of that, Doctor? Doctor? Doctor, don’t blink! Doctor Vantas, you’re really starting to worry me, being silent like that.”

                “Well, this dream concerns me. Hush now, patient, let your doctor think. Barkbeasts such as ‘dogs’ often symbolize loyalty within dreams, but if you’re dreaming of being bit it probably shows your inability to trust people. How old did you say you were when you first began having this dream?”

                “Eight, doctor,  _eight_! How in the world could that affect the way you understand it?”

                “It makes me think that you have not been able to trust the world around you since you were too young to understand what trust is and thenceforth that has been portrayed in your inability to trust your friends as a Knight.”

                They’re quiet for all of twelve seconds before Dave snorts and Karkat giggles. They laugh briefly, not nearly as long as the last time, and they finish eating in silence.

                Dave goes to the kitchen afterward to get another water bottle when he detours to see Derse. It’s still there, hanging out, missing the towers just like before. There is a lot different with it compared to Dave’s Derse, but it still has a sense of home to it. He misses Derse but on the other hand it’s dark back-ways and shadowed, misty-corridors don’t interest him the same way they did three years ago.

                “We should go to Prospit,” he suggests.

                “Why  _there_?” Karkat snorts.

                “It’s your planet, right? From what I remember, you didn’t Wake until minutes before the planet was destroyed, so you didn’t get to spend much time there. Why not?”

                “Why not Derse?”

                “I don’t want to go to Derse.”

                “Why do you want to go to Prospit?”

                “I feel like we would be more readily welcomed there. It would be easier to find a place to live… easier to find jobs, too. You know. That sort of thing.”

                “You’re serious about this.”

                “Yeah.”

                Karkat is silent for a long time. So long, that Dave finally has the time to look at the CaptchaCard Karkat gave him when he returned his glasses. It’s one of Rose’s. It’s of a journal and his name is written on the front with purple gel pen-ink. Just like her. He spends two hours stretching, taking care of the six swords suddenly in his possession and over all winding down from a long day of walking. He waits twenty minutes before going to bed to see if Karkat will answer him.

                He answers him eighteen minutes after the twenty minutes starts, just as he’s getting up to go to the bedroom.

                “Ok.”

                “You’ll come to Prospit with me?”

                “Well… yeah. I mean, I never really got to explore much now did I?”

                Dave smiles gently to himself as he walks into the bedroom. In a sing-song voice he says, “I knew you would.”

                Karkat chuckles behind him, but follows him to bed. Dave kicks off his shoes, takes off his jacket and shirt, lying on the bed in nothing more than his pants and underwear. Karkat keeps his clothes, tosses his shoes and tugs a large portion of the blanket for his own. Dave is fine with this, preferring to be at least somewhat cold in his sleep, and happily removes his glasses. They fall asleep with their backs turned to each other.

                They actually sleep with arms around each other and huddled in the middle of the bed.


	4. In Which We See A Side of Dave No One Knows Of

                “I can see the dreambubbles from here.”

                There are hundreds, thousands, of them, everywhere. They’re the stars that glitter in the sky, twinkling, knocking the moonlights of Derse and Prospit off them as if they were sunlight. Some of them are small, others are large, but they’re  _everywhere_. Some are pretty close to them. As they enter the asteroid’s gravity field, they crumble down until they’re the size of Dave’s pinky nail. They pass through his skin before he even registers what their memory held. There are others—larger ones, the size of which they would survive long enough through the asteroid’s gravity that it wouldn’t crumble and it would be able to expose a memory of a fallen comrade—farther off. They shine the brightest, or are the darkness around the shine.

                Dave isn’t sure that there’s a difference anymore in this cold, lonely land.

                Karkat looks up from where he was digging in the ground to look about them. His eyes sparkle in the reflected light the once-stars that gaze upon them. A slice of his grey skin and the tip of one of his horns light up, too. Dave almost swears that he sees one of his horns twitch, but he’s still vaguely positive that they don’t move. The troll shrugs and returns to clearing a spot for the rudimentary booby-trap they’re supposed to be creating. They don’t want to be caught unawares by some space-gunk, possibly even dead asleep. Dave is a light sleeper. At least he’ll hear it.

                Well, again, the  _supposed_ part throws and elbow into the mix. What had originally started out as Dave sharing the work quickly became  _Strider hold this,_  and  _Strider hand me_ … until he eventually decided to just stand beside Karkat with the supplies nestled in his arms. He hands Karkat one of the thicker sticks they found upon request and steps back to let him walk around him to dig the other half of the trap. Dave carefully steps on the loose dirt around the stick to make it so that it won’t move. Karkat spends another ten minutes clawing at space dirt to get the top layer loose enough to dig. Dave’s fingernails ache with the feeling of dirt under his nails at the thought. He glances at his own to see where they tore during his attempt and where dirt is lodged under it. He needs to wash them.

                He takes several deep breaths and focuses on helping someone else rather than taking care of himself. It has worked these past few years. It can work now.

                “Why are you so worked up?”

                He glances at Karkat. The other man is still digging, his face focused on the goal under his hands, but, again, Dave can swear he sees his horn twitch.

                “No reason.”

                “You’re controlling your breathing, Strider. The only time you ever do that is when you’re fighting. What’s wrong?”

                “Nothing.”

                “Strider.”

                “I told you,  _nothing is wrong_.”

                Karkat finally turns to look at him. His right hand is still in the dirt, but his left hand is resting on the knee that he lifts off the ground to see him. He’s looking over his shoulder at Dave. His lips are thin—almost pursed—and his eyebrows are pinched in the middle, where the sweat is dripping off his forehead, splashing on his cheeks to run down his jaw and neck. Mostly, it hits the ground. “Strider.”

                “It’s nothing.”

                “Then why are you so deliberate with your breathing?”

                “I’m… trying to stay calm.”

                “Why wouldn’t you be? Did you see an enemy?”

                “ _No_ , no,” he shakes his head. “It’s nothing to be concerned about, Vantas. Just get back to digging.”

                “What the hell is with you today, Strider? You’ve been jittery at every little sound.”

                He shrugs. “I just don’t want to be caught unable to get to my sword.”

                “No matter where your sword is, you can get to it. What’s really bothering you?”

                “You’ll think I’m some sort of girl.”

                “No I won’t.”

                “Liar.”

                “I won’t know until you tell me.”

                “I just… need to wash my hands.”

                “You’re right I did lie. Just calm down, Strider, you’ll be able to wash them in a couple of minutes. Sheesh.” Karkat snorts as he returns to digging. “Fuckin’ women these days.”

                The toe of Dave’s sneaker digs into the back of Karkat’s thigh. The other man hisses, calls him a curse word and throws a chunk of dirt at him. Dave drops the dirt on Karkat's back and scrubs at his face until it comes off. His sleeve passes over it sixty-two times.

                He hands Karkat the stick he asks for and does his job to pack it in with his foot. Karkat checks both of the sticks to make sure they aren’t going to fall over before asking for the fishing line that John had in one of his old Cards. He doesn’t doubt that it was probably for pranking purposes. He also hands him the myriad of things to tie up with upon his asking until he has strung a rather loud booby trap in front of their door. Karkat wipes at his forehead before going inside first, muttering about a shower and sweat and making small noises of disgust in the back of his throat.

                Dave goes straight to the kitchenette and scrubs at the underside of his nails. He scrubs until the palms of his hands are bright red and the skin at his wrists is dry and achy. He scrubs it harder and harder, trying to dig out the dirt from underneath his nails. He starts when suddenly the water turns off and his hands are wrapped in a white towel.

                “Let me fini-“

                “Come with me, Strider,” Karkat mutters. It’s quiet, low and calming as if he were speaking to a feral animal. When he doesn’t go with him, Karkat gently tightens the towel over Dave's hands and presses his hand into the small of Dave’s back. He presses it in all the ways that it takes for him to start walking back into the living room. Karkat forces him down on top of the couch so that he’s staring at the door, his back to the faucet. “Stay here. I swear to God if you move by the time I get back, I’m going to kick you in the bone bulge. Several times. Maybe even stomp on it.” There’s fire there, like it’s a promise, but it doesn’t sound like he  _wants_ to do it. Dave nods and traps his wrists between his knees. He breathes heavily, focusing on everything but the ache under his nails where the dirt is digging in, finding root.

                Karkat comes back from the bedroom with a single CaptchaCard in his hands. He sits in front of him pointedly and makes him look at the flathead screwdriver. It was probably Terezi’s at some point because there are strips of red paint and blue, purple and teal as well as what looks like chalk dust on the flat head. He calls it out quietly, holding it in his hands. “Watch me, ok?” Karkat asks. He nods his head slowly and turns to watch as he stands up, walks to the sink in the kitchenette and turns the water on. He makes it a point of standing to the side so that Dave can watch as he soaps it up and runs it under the tap again until he deems it completely clean.

                Then he walks back and gingerly sits beside him, tugging at one of his wrists until he has it in his hand. He is careful not to touch his palm or any other red spot (there are quite a few) as he takes his hand, finger by finger, and digs the dirt out of all of them. There are some where the aggravating near-black line had already been washed away from, but he digs under there, too. Just to be sure. Some of them he has to dig under more than once to make sure he gets them all. Dave counts silently in his head as he finally moves to the next hand. He has to dip the screwdriver under a total of sixty-one times. Dave’s finger twitches and Karkat takes it, digging it under one final time.

                “Better?” He asks quietly as he sets the screwdriver aside. He wraps his hands in the white towel again, being sure to pat his palms clean and be gentle at his wrists. Dave takes a deep breath and lets it out. His shoulders feel a lot less heavy. His eyes, however, take the weight they slump off and fall half-mast.

                “Yeah.”

                They sit in silence. Dave watches tiredly as Karkat takes the hand closer to him and wraps the towel around his wrist. Then, he pulls it down, wiping at the sides of his hands and gently squeezing. He does his palms alone as well as the back of his hands. Then, he does his thumb and his four fingers all at once. Afterward, he takes them one-by-one. He repeats it with his other hand until the towel has met Dave’s skin fifty-nine times. Dave takes it from Karkat after he’s done and pats both of his wrists, then rubs at the top of one of his nails. He’s much calmer now that it’s touched him sixty-two times.

                Karkat rests his hand on top of Dave’s forehead before he slips his sunglasses off. Dave glares at him the moment his fingers touch his glasses, but closes his eyes as they come off. Karkat tugs at him until his head is lying on top of the armrest. He hears Karkat walk away and return before feeling a light weight blanket lie on top of him. He hears the Troll sit down on the floor against the sofa.

                “How did-?”

                “Don’t talk.” Karkat commands. “Just relax. Breathe. Take a nap if you have to.”

                “What did you do with my glass-?”

                “Hush.”

                “Kark-“

                “Shut up.”

                “But-”

                “Just drop it Strider. You’ll thank me later if you do.”

                “For now… ” He settles for lying under the blanket and waiting for Karkat to walk away before finding his glasses and going back to the kitchen. He hears Karkat take his glasses off the side of the couch and stand up. The fridge opens and a few awkward clanking noises later he feels him pull his hand out from under the blanket and gives him a sandwich. Then, he sits down and he eats his own. Dave sits up long enough to eat the peanut butter and jelly, then Karkat pushes him back down.

                He thinks he drifts off eventually but he doesn’t think it’s for long. When he comes to, he’s lying on his side and there’s just enough blanket over his face to open his eyes and see Karkat staring at some Chastity Type cards. He knows that they ended up pissing Karkat off when he couldn’t make them Array Type, but to risk losing whatever is in them didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. They could possibly need the items in the future. Besides, there aren’t many anyway. They can afford to wait and find the keys elsewise they probably never needed them in the first place. They have all of eternity to use them now, too, so waiting is always an option.

                Dave closes his eyes again and pulls the blanket off his face. Then, he reaches forward, finds Karkat’s shoulder and follows the collar of his shirt with his fingers until he gets to where Karkat has his glasses resting. He pulls them out of his shirt and puts them on. Karkat is looking up at him curiously now. His eyes still have a gleam of protectiveness—black on black separated by an even darker line of black—but his lips are twisted up, confused. The constant presence of black pisses Dave off, but when he doesn’t have a different pair of glasses he can switch to, he settles for it. After all, would he rather be blind or only see black?

                Sometimes he just wants to be blind so he doesn’t have to remember his colorless skin.

                “You feeling better now?” Karkat asks quietly.

                “I’m not some sort of doll, Karkat. I’m not going to break.”

                “Sorry?” he chuckles, but it’s halfhearted and completely unsure. “I’m used to Gamzee having these kinds of breakdowns. Not that it’s a breakdown but…. Best way to describe it. Usually after he has an episode like that, he’s sober. So… yeah. Scary as fuck.”

                “Sorry to disappoint.”

                “More of a relief than a disappointment.”

                Dave chuckles lightly.

                “So you want to tell me what triggered it? It was the dirt, right?”

                “OCD, yeah.”

                “What’s that?”

                “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It’s an anxiety disorder.”

                “Do you just pupate with it or something?”

                “We’re  _born_ ; Humans don’t pupate. And some people are I guess. I’m not entirely sure. I know I grew into parts of mine.”

                Karkat nods and sits up on the side of the couch again. He slides the Chastity Type cards into his pocket to be looked at later on. “What’s it do?”

                “There’s a cycle to it. Obsessive to anxiety to doing the act to the relief. Then right back again. With my hands, I can’t have anything stuck under my nails. How bad was Gamzee?”

                “It usually hit him when he was coming down from a high. It was pretty bad after he massacred everyone. I spent days on days just doing that over and over again. Responsibility of a moirail.”

                “Did you know about his, uh, sober side before SGrub?”

                “Yes.”

                He blinks at him, slightly confused, and slides to sit up and stare at him. “What do you mean you did? Why would you keep being friends with such a sociopath? He  _murdered_ almost your entire game play!”

                “Actually, technically all he did was kill Equius and Nepeta and why the fuck am I defending him? Old habits die hard I guess. But before he hadn’t tried to kill  _us_ , you know? I knew about his psychotic side because he used it to save the eleven of us one time a long time ago.”

                “What happened?”

                “Remember how I was telling you about those idiots and how they stuck up for me?”

                “Yeah.”

                “Well, what happened is that one day after school let out, we had to come to my hive—as it was the closest to the schoolhive—to work on a project. We were there for a few hours when drones started coming against me, trying to cull me. Something about someone figuring out my blood color or something, I don’t entirely remember. I just remember being frightened, even as I picked up my scythes. I may have been forced to die, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. The others—and even Crabdad—joined in. I remember now. It was for my sign.”

                “What’s wrong with cancer?”

                “I’m going to go with the assumption you mean the zodiac sign and not, you know, carcinomas.”

                “Yeah that sounds about right.”

                “The thing is… Each blood caste is equipped with different signs that we have to discover for ourselves. We usually find them around our third or fourth sweep. I found mine earlier, which isn’t unheard of but still rare. The thing with me is… well there’s only ever been one other person with my blood color and he is known as The Signless. I found this sign due to the shape of which his burning handcuffs were in at the time of his culling. To openly follow him is considered treason as he was working for a world of peace whereon everyone is equal. No use for The Condesce though she was, evidently, still present.”

                “Ok. Yadda yadda drones came and…?”

                “Well, the others, being the motherfucking, sopor-eating shitheads they are, fought with me. They didn’t know what it was about or anything, just that I was in trouble. But Gamzee didn’t fight being too high off his ass to understand what was going on. Eventually, one by one, the others were knocked away and knocked out. Starting with Crabdad. I was left last to be attacking and I was losing badly. I was obviously going to die. And then Gamzee was suddenly there in front of me with his clubs. And he beat the drones. He beat them mercilessly, killing them one-by-one and even more then. I could only watch in horror. Because there were six of them and all of them were dead by one Troll while eleven of them couldn’t leave a scratch. Then, being the idiot he is, he just turned to me and asked if I knew what he’d done with his pie. He went from crazy-sober to sopor within seconds. It was like he didn’t realize it. I never told the others how it was they were defeated and they were content to know that I was safe.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Sometimes… I wonder if I should have warned them.”

                “And do what? Tell them ‘hey guys Gamzee’s a mass murdering fuck head watch out for him ok’. That’s not something you can exactly just  _say_. They would need proof. And good proof. None of that bullshit ‘look one time…’ shit. While, yes, it’s a compelling story it’s also just as likely that you went batshit insane and killed the drones while they were unconscious. It’s not like Gamzee remembered it or anything so he can’t back it up. For all they know, you could have been pinning the blame on them.  _On top of that_ , if you had known that he was a mass murdering fuck head and called him that,  _why would he have been one of the twelve to create my universe?_ Look at it logically Kark. Maybe you did everything just as you were supposed to. I mean, this is still Alpha Timeline so far as I’m aware and I’m the Master of Time.”

                “Ok, fine, you make a good point. Anyway, how are you feeling? Calm?”

                “Of course I have a point. And we’ve been over this part of the discussion already. Yes. I’m feeling just fine. Calm as fuck. Cool headed. I’m so cool that if I were to drink water, it’d turn to ice in my mouth.”

                Karkat’s lips tug into a half-smirk and he rolls his eyes. “Good to hear. Sit up correctly; my ass hurts from sitting on the ground.”

                “You didn’t have to sit on the fuckin’ ground dude.”

                “Wanted to make sure you didn’t run off and go back to washing your hands.”

                Dave laughs through his nose, rolls his eyes and pulls his legs up to his chest. Karkat slips back into the couch correctly and pulls the CaptchaCards back out. Dave finds the card he gave him yesterday of Rose’s journal on him. Most of the beginning is comprised of rudimentary notes, probably from the time when they first met. Her handwriting has vastly improved, he realizes as he flips through it. Partway through, he gets up to take a piss and returns to Karkat asking him to get him a water bottle while he is up. Dave grabs one from the fridge and hands it over as he sits down, too distracted to care otherwise.

                Most of the book is bullshit, but he finds the questions that Rose is asking herself really interesting. There are stupid ones like “what’s his favorite color?” and “how old is he?” early on, like the friend-to-friend stuff that no one really cares about, but there are also more interesting ones like “why doesn’t he talk about himself often?” and “what is he hiding behind those ‘sick rhymes’ and funny word games?”. The one that catches him off guard comes on a page where her blocky handwriting has suddenly smoothed out to the beautiful cursive he knows, though there are jagged marks as if she is still new to it and doesn’t entirely remember everything.

                 _Dave has suddenly returned after his three year absence. He doesn’t talk about what it was that deterred him for so long nor does he even hint at it. His word games have become more and more erratic, as if to protect even himself from what happened. Perhaps he’s scarred himself in some way that he will not even touch his Skype account anymore? It’s been a little over the time he has disappeared that we have used it and he turns it down at every count. What happened to him while he was gone?_

                That was the end of the page. Whereas most of the entries take up three to four pages, if not more, this one barely takes up seven lines of purple ink and a random cacophony of little dots where she bounced her pen on top of the page—probably while talking to him.

                He remembers those three years.

                He would do anything in his immediate possibilities to forget it. Even resort to drinking with Roxy (something he has done for this exact reason. He finds he holds his liquor all too well.).

                He eventually puts the journal back in the card and slips it to Karkat. He takes the moment to watch Karkat sketch the designs of the locks onto paper and shade them, hoping to figure out what the key is. Then, he lays his head back and stares at the ceiling.

                “We should probably figure out how we’re going to get to Prospit.”

                “Go to Derse, take the cab to Prospit.” Karkat shrugs. “End of worries.”

                “And how are we going to get to Derse?”

                “Does it matter? We’ll figure that out when we get closer.”

                “Holy  _fuck_ I am  _bored_.”

                “I noticed.” Karkat takes the moment to finish drawing and throws the papers and pencil down on the ground. He stretches his legs out before shifting around and resting his back against the arm of the chair. Then, he stretches his legs out so that they’re on the side closest to the floor. Dave gives him a bad look but returns the favor, sticking his legs out against the back of the couch. Karkat smirks. Dave rolls his eyes. “If you had to make a caste system for your world, what would it be?”

                “Like, currently?”

                “Yeah.”

                “That would be weird since, I mean, there are so many different forms of government and shit.”

                “Humor me.”

                “I guess… The top would probably be the president or kings and queens that actually do their work. Then parliament and congress and stuff since, ‘cus’ while they have the same power or even more, they aren’t figurehead status. Then the kings and queens that  _are_ figureheads and have absolutely no reigning power like Britain has. Had. Probably high class philanthropists after that, billionaires? Um… Well, millionaires after that. People who are CEOs and so on down the working scale, but it’s organized by how much money you make since that’s how the world works. Then veterans and after that homeless people. Nothing against veterans though but I mean there are just  _so many_ after twenty years of war. And after homeless people would probably be dead people. After that, albinos.”

                “And compared to the hemospectrum?”

                “I dunno. Prolly just liked up like yours, only albinos are lesser than even your status.”

                “You can’t exactly get much lower than a genetic defect.”

                “Albinism is the lack of melanin in the body brought on by a genetic defect.”

                “Oh.”

                “Yeah. Good thing you never started a war.”

                “The Signless did.”

                “But that was for the benefit of all, not the benefit for just one kind of person.”

                “Ok I’m losing this argument.”

                “There was an argument you could win in the first place?”

                “Suck a bonebulge.”

                “Speaking of bonebulges, how does reproducing with buckets even _work_?”

                “Where do you make the connection there?”

                “Where don’t you?”

                “I didn’t even  _mention_ a pail nor did I hint at one!”

                “Don’t question my mind. Answer it.”

                “It’s not that hard of a concept. Drones come to your door once every few sweeps after you hit a certain number of sweeps and demand that you fill a bucket with your genetic material in order to ensure the survival of the race and if you can’t fill it within a certain amount of time, you’re culled. Simple.”

                “How  _the fuck_ do your bodies  _work_?”

                “Magic, motherfucker. How do you  _think_? Obviously, there is  _nothing_ in your thinkpan up there! It’s just a  _body;_ it’s not all that different from yours!”

                “We don’t reproduce with  _pails_.”

                “You say that as if that’s the only way Trolls have ever reproduced. A long-ass motherfuckin’ time ago, we used to reproduce  _just like you did_.”

                “Like… internally.”

                “Yes.”

                “In your body.”

                “That’s what  _internally_ implies, fucknuts.” Taking insults out of John’s vocabulary; Dave would be impressed except that, one, he’s not and, two, it’s  _John’s_  vocabulary.

                “How do you make the jump from internally to  _buckets_?”

                He shrugs. “There was an empress who liked a woman but they couldn’t reproduce so she demanded that some scientists find a way to make it so they could. This happened, that happened, eventually they could but it would take a bucket-load of their mixed genetic material to ensure that it could work. So that’s how the buckets came about. Eventually the lusus were put to use because the royal decree that internal breeding could no longer take place came about and no one knew which child belonged to which couple. After that, the quadrants started coming into fruition because if  _everyone_ can reproduce, what’s the point of only having one person to do it with? That’s kind of ridiculous don’t you think?” He shrugs his shoulders. “And then since everyone could reproduce, terms like ‘homosexual’ became too redundant and fell out of use to the point where they sound foreign to even us.”

                “And the kids didn’t fuckin’ mutate or something?”

                “Course they did. Back when we were still doin’ it internally, they were born as wrigglers but after that they were first created as grubs and then they had to pupate in order to become wrigglers.” He shrugs again, like it’s the simplest thing in the universe. Dave wants to smash his head against the wall until he gets the fact that  _no_ , this is  _not simple_ this is an  _entire society rewritten because of one chick’s whims._ “And then there’s also the fact that with one bucketful, a mothergrub can create upwards of six grubs from it. So then they started having to fight each other in order to ensure that we wouldn’t get overpopulated. That’s about when we started getting violent, though we had to be violent before that. The terrains of Alternia aren’t exactly, well,  _friendly_ if that’s the feeling you’re looking for.”

                “And what was the purpose of the mothergrub before that?”

                “She also births the lusus that care for the wrigglers. Before that, she was just the maiden that forced us to be violent so that we could survive. After that, she gave us the things we needed to learn how to be violent. Turns out, the lusus are actually smarter than even most of the Trolls. I’m not excluding myself from that, there is a lot that Crabdad didn’t teach me before he died.”

                “And suddenly she goes from enemy-mother to the birther-of-entire-generations? And no one  _asks_ any questions about it?”

                Karkat shrugs. “We couldn’t exactly  _question_ the Condesce and her ways, you know. I mean, just knowing all of that is enough to get you culled.”

                “Then why do you know that?”

                “The Trollian timelines go back much farther than the others realize. I mean, it only took a couple of scrolls and suddenly, oh, look, the beginning of time. I wonder if it was any better back six billion sweeps ago? Spoiler: it wasn’t.”

                “Why the fuck would you watch that shit?”

                “We had more than enough time to sit around on our asses and wait for you guys. I mean, it’s not like we can suddenly fast forward and program Trollian to find the people that are supposed to take our place in the creation of the new universe or anything. That took time. And it’s not like I watched the entire thing, I just skipped through most of it. Learned what I did.”

                “I’m vaguely positive that you’re trolling me right now.”

                “I’m not.”

                “Then why would we reproduce internally versus with buckets?”

                “Your entire civilization was based off of ours. You think that Earth didn’t go through the same things that Alternia went through? It was even in the same order! The only difference is that, one, there weren’t  _seadwelling_ Humans—so far as I know. And there wasn’t a hemospectrum. All of that was probably brought on from the cancer, too. The same things happened and occurred, it’s just it happened a lot quicker than in Alternia, though reproducing with buckets probably wasn’t that far off.” Idly, Karkat reaches out and taps his knuckles on the toe of Dave’s shoe. He wriggles in toes inside of it. “Then again the gender thing might not change with your species. The meiosis of your cells seems much more strict than Trolls’.”

                “What gender thing?”

                “For a while after the bucket-thing was implemented, there were three genders. One with only nooks, one with only bonebulges and one with both. After a handful of sweeps, the one with only bonebulges fell of the map and there hasn't been another Troll of that sex to resurface and suddenly remind us of its existence since then.”

                “Uhhuh. And the name of this sex was?”

                “There isn’t an equivalent in your language. There’s only ‘he’ and ‘she’ in yours and, eventually, that’s what the two genders became in ours.” He shrugs. “It’s not rocket science.”

                Dave still wants to beat his head against the wall. He doesn’t think that he will, though. He supposes that some things just don’t mix up. “So are buckets, like, sex toys or something?”

                “ _No!_ ” Dave winces behind his glasses. He feels like the yell was enough of a slap to knock him senseless. “Ok, picture this, nooksniffer: a man who has a gun comes to your door. In his other hand he has a bucket. He demands that you and the person that you’re currently interested in fill it with genetic fluid. As in, your fuckin’ semen after you  _orgasm_. But he has a gun to your head the  _entire fucking time_  and, no, no he will not leave you to do it in the next room  _he demands that you do it in front of him_. I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty hard to get it on with anyone when  _there is a gun to the back of your head_! And if you’re lucky enough to fall in place and actually do it, you’re unlucky enough to have to do it again  _only a handful of sweeps later_.”

                “Ok, ok, so they’re not sex toys, sheesh. You didn’t have to go all”—he waves his hand at him vaguely before deciding on what to say—“you didn’t have to go all Karkat Vantas on me.”

                Karkat gives him his trademark not-amused look. Dave still doesn’t have a better reference. Karkat eventually sighs and picks up Dave’s foot—the one closer to Karkat.

                “The fuck are you doin’ man?”

                “Thinkin’ ‘bout giving you a foot massage before you go to bed.”

                Dave jerks his foot back, away from Karkat, and pulls them both close to his body.

                “Something against massages?”

                “No, no, not at all. I… I just don’t like my feet being touched. I- wait, why the fuck do you want to in the first place?”

                “You gave me a back massage when we first got here.”

                “I also called you out on your blood color!”

                Karkat shrugs. “You’re acting like they were related.”

                “Kind’a  _yeah_.”

                “You had already apologized on the walk here so it’s redundant to apologize twice and thenceforth I didn’t take the massage on that note. Besides, you give fuckin’  _great_ massages, as much as it pains me to say. Something like  _that_ doesn’t make the equivalent. Besides, you’re still not completely relaxed after that scene in the kitchen.”

                “It was a breakdown.”

                “It was a  _scene_ ,” he snaps. “You can’t tell me that every time you wash your hands you have a breakdown like that. Besides, it’s not like you broke skin or anything.”

                Dave chuckles sardonically. “Yes and every new fuckin’ word that we use to describe it suddenly makes me a better person.”

                “Not necessarily,” Karkat reminds him. “But would you rather think ‘I had  _another_ breakdown’ or ‘I had another scene’ because I don’t know about you but the breakdown makes me think that I let  _myself_ down whereas the scene reminds me of the condition.”

                Dave has a reply on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it down. Eventually, he sighs and mutters “Gamzee had it pretty bad, huh?”

                “Yeah. Had him in tears when he couldn’t do something. Got pretty good at talking him down, though, not that it was very easy in the first place. So, c’mon. Let me massage your feet.”

                “How about my shoulders?”

                “I’m better at foot massages.”

                “I don’t like my feet being touched. I flip my shit whenever someone tries.”

                “Ok. Fine. Sit on the ground so I have leverage.”

                Dave nods and slips down. He hears Karkat shift behind him and place one leg on either side of him. His hands are warm through his shirt and his thumbs press at the base of his neck first. They slide out slowly, pressing at odd intervals when he finds tight spots. Karkat isn’t the  _best_ masseuse in the world, but neither is Dave and beggars can’t be choosers. The pressure is enough to make his mind go blank and for him to relax into the warmth of skilled hands. He isn’t sure when it starts, but he feels his throat vibrating with low noises as Karkat works his thumbs into some of the more-knotted spots in his muscles. For all Dave cares, Karkat is a god right now.

                He doesn’t even want to think of what a foot massage would feel like if this is how good a shoulder massage is.

                Karkat eventually stops, clenching his fingers as though in pain. Dave leans back against the couch and tips his head up on top of the couch. Karkat makes a small noise in the back of his throat, which Dave ignores in his semi-blissed-out state of mind. Eventually, one of Karkat’s hands rests awkwardly on top of his forehead and the other twitches against his throat.

                It only takes Dave a few seconds after that to remember where exactly it would mean he’s at if one of Karkat’s legs is on either side of him. He sits up and coughs into his hand awkwardly. He rubs the back of his head, mutters a few choice words including “going to bed”. Karkat chuckles vaguely and waves him off.

                Karkat follows after Dave an hour and a half later and only after he’s somewhat content to admit to himself that no matter what he does his drawing skills (ok, lack-thereof) will never be able to magically grow just enough to tell him all about what in the world the keys are. He finds Dave lying on his stomach with the pillow clutched to his face like it was an actual living thing. His shoes have been toed off and left at the foot of the bed, soon joined by Karkat’s own. Dave sleeps in his God Tier pants, but he has the faded-red tank top from earlier on. Karkat is left to sleep in slacks and his turtleneck, not that he would have it any other way.

                He lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, daring day to come. He doesn’t think that he’ll sleep tonight. While his muscles and bones are weighing him down and his eyelids seem just as heavy, there’s still a buzz in his limbs. It’s that same incessant buzz that has been known to keep him up for days on end, many times even longer.

                At the same time, he doesn’t want to stalk around the house like some sort of weirdo, waiting for Dave to wake up in order to have something to occupy his mind with. At least when he was with the other Trolls, most of them often stayed up or at least Kanaya would. He would have something to do so long as she was in a good mood. Now, though, he’s just lying here waiting for the fuck-head he’s hated for all this time to wake up so he won’t be alone.

                Speaking of said fuck-head, the man is curled into a tight ball, his hand fisting in the pillow. His brow is furrowed and his jaw set. He’s rolling over and over, trying to get comfortable, trying to push something off. Karkat reaches out to stop him, presses his hand against his skin to get him to stay still, but Dave flinches away from him in his sleep. That’s all it takes for him to realize he’s having a nightmare. He grabs his arm and shakes him. He shakes him hard and fast, calls his name.

                Dave wakes with a jerk sitting upright. He rubs at his eyes, startled, but his other hand is clenched into the fabric over his chest.

                “You were having a nightmare,” Karkat explains quietly.

                “G-go back to sleep,” he hisses and it almost sounds like he’s _crying_. Karkat sits up correctly, but Dave slips off the bed. “Go back to sleep, Karkat.”

                “Where are you going?”

                “Go back to sleep.”

                It’s almost a mantra now. Dave keeps telling him to do it, even as he almost runs out the bedroom. He hears the door to the ablution chamber open and the ablution fall’s curtain opens and shuts with a sound of plastic on metal. Something breaks while he’s in there, but it doesn’t sound to be glass or anything inherently detrimental.

                Karkat slowly slips to his feet and follows, curious. He finds Dave curled into a ball at the foot of the ablution fall. The light is off, but Karkat can see just enough to tell that Dave is rocking harshly. He’s muttering something under his breath, a real mantra this time, the words “I’m human” slipping through his lips as though he’s trying harder to remind himself that than Karkat.

                “Dave?”

                He doesn’t seem to notice Karkat’s presence. He remains rocking, his lips moving until the words slur and then he starts all over again. Karkat pushes open the curtain more and sits on the side of the tub, watching the other. He looks for an opening in Dave’s senses, waiting. He reminds himself that while this isn’t Gamzee, Dave probably needs more attention than Gamzee ever needed at this one moment of time. He needs to stay patient.

                Something is really wrong.

                He reaches out, tries to get his attention again, but Dave flinches from his touch  _before his hand can even brush his skin_. Karkat pulls back, bites his lip, and moves to kneel on the linoleum outside of the tub. His hand brushes something hard, which skitters on the ground. Two of the black rings holding the curtain up lay broken on top of each other in a familiar pattern. He can’t name where he’s seen it from, though.

                Dave has chanted “I’m human” a total of sixty-two times before his lips cease working and he’s left rocking himself quietly. His breathing is hard and ragged, like he doesn’t entirely believe it but knows he has to calm down.

                “Go back to sleep,” Dave whispers at last. “Turn the water on and leave.”

                “I’m not going to let you shower just like that, Dave.”

                “W-why not?”

                Now he remembers. The pattern is in the shape of a key in one of the Chastity Type cards Kanaya left.

                “You’ll end up scrubbing until you’re raw and bleeding. Just wait a moment, ok? I’ll be right back. If I’m not back in a minute, you can go ahead and turn the water on. Is that ok with you?” Dave nods minutely and Karkat grabs up the broken rings. He rushes to find where he left the Card and scrambles, barely managing to put them in correctly.

                The card flashes a few times, shows white with the key lying in black in the middle before it fades out and reveals what item is hidden inside. The item slides out, unhindered by his thumb in the center of the card.


	5. Shower Time

                The hand-shower nozzle weighs down Karkat’s left hand as he walks back to the bathroom. Dave is still rocking back and forth, but he doesn’t seem to have moved much more than that and definitely hasn’t turned the shower on.

                “I’m turning the light on,” he warns. Dave stills slightly in the tub, but returns to rocking shortly thereafter. “Are your eyes shut?”

                He whispers a tiny, affirmative number that sounds somewhere between “yeah” and “mmhmm”. He flips the switch on and walks in quietly. Karkat carefully stands on the side of the tub and gingerly removes the original shower head, putting the hand shower on in its place.

                “Take your clothes off.”

                The rocking has toned down enough that Dave is able to hold a small conversation. Nothing much, but the one or two words he gives are more than he was able to get out only a handful of minutes ago. “What…? No… you’re not… I’m not… going to… let you… let you… bathe me.” He sounds miserable.

                “It’ll be better if I wash you than if you do. That way you’ll come out clean and you won’t have any red patches or be bleeding from where you scrubbed too hard or too long. I won’t look.”

                “How can you not see me when you’re bathing me?”

                “I’ll see, but I won’t look. Looking would mean I’m, uh, trying to find something, but with seeing my eyes are just passing over and I’m not really registering anything.”

                “…ok. Don’t look.”

                “I won’t.” It’s a lie. Karkat doesn’t even bother trying to hide it from himself. He wants to know why he has never seen Dave without a shirt on in the (coming-up-on-) two sweeps he has known him for. He wants to know why he doesn’t like having his feet touched. He wants to know why he is curled in a ball, rocking himself to keep from bursting into tears. He also wants to know why Dave can’t stand the thought of him seeing him naked.

                Dave, very slowly, pulls his shirt off, then pushes his pants off, too, underwear, socks and all. He turns around and shows his back to Karkat. The water starts slowly at Dave’s twisting of the knob. Karkat leans back and takes his shirt off before he can get it wet. Dave doesn’t notice.

                He can honestly say that the sight he is met with is not one that he ever expected to see. He knew that Dave had scars. Most of the ones he has seen are on his arms and he has seen the darkened mark around his ankle on occasion, mostly during one of their spars. His back is torn up though. None of the scars have a  _lot_ of color to them—none, actually, none whatsoever—but they’re raised and grotesque. He can see where the edge of a whip has dug in and pulled blood at in the past. There is scarcely an empty spot on his back that hasn’t become some sort of sick, twisted cross-hashing of raised skin. A lot of the lines look like they had been infected at some point in his life. He can’t imagine Dave having had all of them simultaneously, but the aging of them all seems to be about the same time.

                He has to remind himself that Dave is only sixteen, even if he does have the back of a slave. And he refuses to acknowledge the fact that none of them could possibly be more than eight years old, the newest ones being about five. He can’t even make out the bullet scars from when he went from his original body to his Derse body… if those even exist.

                Karkat shakes his head and focuses on wetting his back with a small hand rag. He runs his hands through Dave’s hair, forcing it to wet even though it doesn’t seem like it wants to. From his position, he can see the hints of scars on his chest, but nothing outright and definitely nothing raised as badly as the ones the rag is currently running over are.

                He is careful about scrubbing just hard enough for Dave to feel as if he’s getting clean without pulling at his skin. For the most part, Dave is good about helping him out. He lifts his arm up as the water is drawn down past his shoulder and lets Karkat scrub at it with the wash rag without a single thought. He also turns around slightly so that he can get to his other arm. When it comes to washing his front, Dave presses his back against the wall and lets him get his chest. Karkat avoids everything around his bonebulge (which really doesn’t look as different as he suspected) but makes sure that it at least gets wet.

                Karkat doesn’t immediately go for Dave’s feet, but dear  _Gog_ does he want to know what is between him and them being touched. He offers Dave a half-hearted smile that would probably kill kittens if he tried to do it when Dave had his eyes open and tugs at one of his ankles. It’s clean. There are no marks on it. Karkat, with the hand-shower in his mouth, one foot in his hand and the other hand wiping a cloth against it, is ready to admit to himself that Dave just has sensitive feet when he picks the other up.

                It’s around this time that Dave starts muttering again.

                It’s the only amount of color on his entire body. Light brown in color, but it might as well be black on the white canvas. The snake curls around his ankle, biting down on itself in the center of his foot. The main body, though, begins in the underside of his foot. It swirls on his heel, curls up and swirls on the ball of his foot, then curls around and slips between his first two toes, where he slithers up his skin, around his ankle and bites down hard.

                Karkat recognizes it for what it is. He fights to keep his face straight, even though Dave can’t possibly hope to see. He can feel the rough texture of the skin where someone had burned the brand into Dave’s skin. It looks like someone went over it with a tattoo gun. Whether or not it’s because his skin hadn’t given the color they wanted or because they wanted more detail is beyond Karkat ability to comprehend the situation. Whichever it was, it probably had Dave screaming at the top of his lungs.

                Karkat puts the foot back down and sits on the side of the tub as he grabs the shampoo. He works it between his hands, massaging it into the feather-light white hair. The ends of it curl around his fingers, but for the most part there isn’t much texture to it. Karkat massages it in and tips Dave’s head back so it won’t get in his eyes. He washes it out and repeats with the conditioner. Then, he works the body soap into the washcloth and goes over every bit of his body from before.

                “C’mon Dave,” he finally mutters as he finishes. “Time to get out.”

                “But-“

                “You’ve been in the shower for sixty-two minutes.”

                And just like that, Dave is suddenly  _all for_ getting out again. He turns the water off and leans his legs down. Tilting his head back he takes a few deep breaths. Karkat grabs a large towel and wraps it around his shoulders, using it to pull him up to a standing position. Dave takes the towel from him and wraps it around his waist. Karkat grabs his shirt, Dave’s pants and his underwear, passing it over. He grabs the tank top and waits for Dave to realize that he’s standing in front of him with his clothes.

                “Underwear’s on top,” he finally supplies. “Then pants then shirt.”

                “…thanks.”

                Karkat knows it’s for more than just handing him his clothes. It’s for putting up with his complete and utter mental breakdown when Karkat wanted to do nothing more than jump around the room and scream, demanding to know what it would take for him to snap out of it; to bash his head against the wall until he forgets about whatever dream it was he had and come back to the real world. Patience isn’t his forté and he doubts it ever will be. He offers a small chuckle and leaves to let him dress. In the meantime, Karkat pulls Dave’s tank top on and pulls at the bottom until he decides to pull his pants up instead.

                He has broader shoulders than the Human in the bathroom has. His arms are also a little longer, making his torso just barely larger. While this is true, Dave also has longer legs and winds up taller than him anyway. Only by a few inches in all of the aspects above, but it’s enough to make the tank top rest on his hips with an inch of awkward grey skin in between. It’s weird to feel the cool air against his arms and his collarbone, something completely foreign to him after years of overheating in a turtleneck shirt.

                The door eventually opens. “This is your shirt,” Dave whispers, his fingers playing with the bottom hem. The arms are wrinkled up to get the elastic to fit around his wrists, but it looks like the sleeves are too long, anyway. His head appears to have fit in just fine and his neck is cushioned inside of the elastic as if it belonged there.

                “I figured that after you had everything on display, you would want to hide more than what a tank top could give you.” Dave nods, mute. “And, considering it  _is_ my favorite shirt, don’t bunch the sleeves up.” Then, the Troll takes his hands and pulls at the sleeves until they hide every little bit of his palms. The only things that poke out of it are the tips of his thumbs and his fingers.

                And that is so adorable it takes everything he has not to laugh at it.

                He nearly beats his fists into his skull when he realizes that he just called it “adorable”.

                Dave is nearly drowning in his shirt and he thinks it’s adorable.

                Ok. It is adorable.

                That never leaves his mind.

                It’s not even part of his memory as far as he’s concerned.

                He tugs at Dave’s fingers until he starts walking, carefully steering him through the rest of the hall and the bedroom with a hand on the small of his back, just like earlier. Dave follows without too much of a fight and even lies back down, even as he mutters “I’m not going back to sleep.”

                “You don’t have to.” He comments. “Just lie down and relax.”

                “…How many times did you have to do that for Gamzee?”

                Karkat chuckles breathlessly. “I never had to. Gamzee freaked any time I tried to so much as ask if he was washing his hands again. I had to break down his bathroom door to get him to stop washing them. Like hell he would let me anywhere close enough to do that for him.”

                “Then why did you do that for me?”

                He shrugs his shoulders. “You needed someone to be there for you.”

                “What do you mean? I’m plenty capable of taking care of myself!”

                “Just because you  _can_ doesn’t mean you  _should_.”

                Dave has no answer to this. Karkat watches him flap his lips for the moment, eyes still shut to make up for his lack of glasses. At last, he takes a deep breath, rolls onto his stomach and hugs the pillow to his face.

                “Feferi… used to tell me about how she believed that the people who care about others the most need to be cared  _for_  the most.”

                “She’s bullshitting you.”

                “She would talk about the people who are the strongest being the ones who are the most sensitive.”

                “Obviously she’s lying.”

                “The ones who are the kindest to people who haven’t wronged them are the most hurt.”

                “Why are you even still  _talking_?”

                “She went on and on about how people who smile the widest cry the most. That reminds me more of Harley than you.”

                “I  _obviously_ don’t want to hear this.”

                “The people who love others the most need love the most.”

                His answer is slower this time than it had been with the others. “When the hell are you going to shut your mouth, Vantas?”

                He reaches over and rests his hand on top of Dave’s forearm. Dave doesn’t make a move to throw him off. “As soon as you admit to yourself that you’re not fucking  _alone_ anymore.”

                Dave’s eyes open. He hisses, his eyes clamp shut within seconds, but he forces them open again. Tears glitter in front of candy apple red eyes, some of them falling down, chasing their way down his nose or over the curve of his cheek. “I’m  _not_ ,” he replies. “Obviously you’re here and it’s not like I can shake someone as stubborn and pigheaded off of my tail without  _killing_ you. Honestly, I’m fucking sick an’ tired of all the fighting.”

                Karkat offers a twitch of his lips upward and takes his hand back. He tugs the blanket up over Dave’s body before slipping under himself. He rolls to face Dave and watches, waiting for him to fall asleep before following himself.

                “How… did you know about the sixty-two thing?” Dave whispers, near sleep and not willing to admit it.

                “Earlier, you wiped your hands on the towel sixty-two times. Your mantras came in pairs of sixty-two and you even rocked yourself sixty two times before taking a moment to calm down. I was only guessing.”

                “It’s… another part of my OCD. Most people are obsessed with smaller numbers. S’why you don’t see me counting things off, or else I start counting everything. I also have a bad stutter when I hit the number sixty-two.”

                “Why sixty-two?”

                He shrugs. “Why thirteen? Why seven? Why three? It’s just a number. Maybe someone, somewhere, just owes me seven and I’ll never know.”

                “Dave.”

                “What?”

                “Shut up and go to sleep.”

                He chuckles into the pillow, starts to deny it but falls off half-way. He inches closer to Karkat, then buries his nose in his own elbow. Karkat chuckles lightly, pulls him even closer so that they can share the warmth and refuses to let himself think about whatever nightmare he had had to make him act like that in the first place.

                Instead, he wraps his arm around the back of Dave’s shoulders, his hand fitted on top of his arm and let’s himself stop thinking all together. He doesn’t remember falling asleep—but, then again, who does?

 

) - ( - ) - ( - ) - (

 

                Dave lounges on the couch, watching Karkat over the seven-sweep-old’s shoulder as the other continues to doodle the designs of the Chastity-Type keys down. Karkat yawns into the back of his hand, rubs at his eye and continues to switch his hand across the paper, adding dark and light lines on. At last, Dave breaks the uncomfortable silence that has plagued them since he woke up with his nose nestled into Karkat’s neck and lips barely an inch off his skin.

                “Where’d you get the paper at?”

                “Ripped it out of one of Lalonde’s books.” Not for the first time, he thinks he sees Karkat’s horn twitch. “I figured that since she doesn’t even  _have_ a cat named Sebastian—or, if she ever did she doesn’t now—it wasn’t a big deal.”

                “Nah, it’s good. Best to save our grist for when we need it.”

                “What’s on your mind? You sound distracted.”

                “There’s…. It’s not important. So, do these things, like, move or something?” He reaches out and places the tip of his finger on top of one of Karkat’s horns. The man flinches and pulls away, glaring at him as if he had just kicked his cat.

                “They’re not  _supposed_ to, no.” Karkat huffs out a deep breath and sits back up again, turning his back to him. “It’s not like a fucking  _arm_ or anything. They just sense changes in the environment. Helps when we’re battling in the catacombs after we pupate. Allows us to see an’ shit.”

                “So does it, like, give you a headache when they’re touched?”

                “No.”

                “Then why the vicious reaction?”

                “I don’t like it when people touch my horns.”

                “I think we’re past the point where we respect boundaries, says the man to the Troll who  _bathed him_ last night.”

                “I don’t care about that shit; don’t touch my fucking horns and I’ll keep off your motherfucking back!”

                “There’s just one problem with that: you’re not going to drop it ever. Regardless. I don’t even know why you haven’t asked about it yet anyway.”

                “Would you have told me?”

                “ _No_.”

                “That’s why.”

                “But you’re still not going to drop it, so saying that I won’t touch your horns to not get you to think about it is a suicide mission.” He reaches out and thumbs the tip of Karkat’s horn again. The man shudders and his breathing skitters. Dave chuckles brilliantly as his hand is slapped away. “You’re ticklish.”

                “I am not!”

                “Then why can’t you stop laughing when I do this?” He reaches out again, this time with both hands, and takes both horns into his possession. Karkat jumps and tries to jerk away, but Dave twitches his fingers before slowly beginning to rub them. Karkat tries to abscond, but his body betrays him as he lets out one jerk-giggle after the other until he’s wheezing. This laugh isn’t anything like the laugh Dave heard last time. This one is a breathless mass of agonized tickling, but the last one had been reminiscent. The last one had been more sad than euphoric.

                Karkat beats his fists into Dave’s sides as he tries to bat him off. He fights him, pushing with arms and legs both, even trying to butt his head free, but Dave hangs on. He only stops when Karkat is red in the face, desperate to breathe, and clinging to his shirt. Dave bends his head forward, resting it on the ground over Karkat head as he forces himself not to laugh. Karkat’s fingers clench and unclench in his shirt, flexing against his muscles as he gasps.

                At last, there’s a pause where neither of them says anything and both of their breathing has returned to normal and…

                … and Karkat promptly shoves his fist into the side of Dave’s jaw, flinging him off and making him land on his back with a loud smack. Dave hisses, rubbing at the spot. For a moment he considers punching back, but then he realizes that he probably deserved it. That, and he really doesn’t have the will to fight him anymore. He lets himself fall back on the floor and Karkat does the same beside him. The troll has his hands curled against his sides, holding them in what looks like pain.

                “This is weird,” Dave confesses immediately.

                “Being stuck in a video game for the rest of your life or lying on the ground in said video game next to the guy who tried to get you into a _kismesissitude_  only a few weeks ago. Days? Sweeps? Fuck time.”

                “Not  _wanting_  to fight  _you_  is weird.”

                “You deserved that punch.”

                “Did you not hear what I said? I  _just_ said that I don’t want to fucking fight you, Karkat Vantas, prick of all ages and King of Lame.  _The_ one guy whom _I have always wanted to fight with_  is also the one guy who has now become just some random guy I’m living the last of my days out with. I don’t want to fight. I’ve wanted to fight since I was fuckin’  _two_. Younger! I’ve always sparred with Bro and then you, once we met up, but I have absolutely  _no drive_ to fist my hand or even pick up a sword!”

                Karkat doesn’t answer immediately. He flexes his hands against his sides, rolls his shoulders a bit, throws his feet up on the edge of the couch and even clears his throat, but he doesn’t speak. When he does, it’s just one word: “same.”

                “Are we depressed?”

                “I don’t want to kill myself, Strider. And give me some warning before you try to kill yourself. Oh, wait _, you can’t die_.”

                “This is probably the moment in time where Rose makes it a very obvious fact that being depressed doesn’t equate to suicidal or something like that.”

                “I thought they were the same thing.”

                “No,” he grumbles as he kicks one of his feet onto the couch next to Karkat’s, keeping the other down long enough to pull his sock and shoe off. He puts it up, showing off the brand of the snake eating itself. “I’ve been suicidal before. This isn’t the same thing. I just…. I’m pissed off. At everything. And pretty much anything that happens to cross my path. I’m pissed, but I just… don’t care enough to do anything about it.”

                “Pretty much yeah.”

                “Depression is just anger without enthusiasm, huh.”

                “Sums this up pretty well.”

                “Is this… a feelings fest?”

                “No pile of shit to sit on, so I don’t think so.”

                “Feels like one.”

                “Has the awkward air of one.”

                “Did you have many?”

                “I mostly just listened to the others and gave them advice on their relationships. I never talked about myself and I don’t plan on it. But… how’d you get that brand?”

                “I think you know that, Karkat.”

                “No I don’t.”

                “Sure you do.”

                “I can guess.”

                “Go ahead.”

                “Will you tell me if I’m right?”

                “No.”

                “Then why should I waste the energy?”

                Dave doesn’t say anything. Karkat doesn’t expect him to. Dave prefers the silence that ensues over the thought of having to talk about  ** _it_**  with anyone ever again. Karkat twists his foot in a circle and his ankle pops. It sounds like an explosion in the silence of the asteroid. Dave eventually puts his sock and shoe back on.

                “We should leave this squat-house soon if we really want to get to Prospit.” Dave whispers. Karkat makes a noise in the back of his throat and he repeats it louder.

                “We should, but I don’t really want to have to deal with all of those fucking gravity changes so soon. Tomorrow or the day after. My neck is still sore from it.”

                “Roll over.”

                “What? No. Why? You’re not going to give me another massage, and then refuse to let me pay you back.”

                “Technically, it would be  _me_  paying  _you_  back.”

                “ _How_?”

                “Karkat, you fuckin’ bathed me when I couldn’t tell up from down  _and_ gave me a shirt to hide in.”

                “You  _needed it_ though. I don’t  _need_ a massage.”

                “You  _deserve_ a thousand for putting up with that.”

                “I don’t  _deserve_ anything!”

                “And I don’t _need_ you to calm me down, but you did it anyway!”

                “You  _needed_ that Dave-“

                “This was probably the  _sixtieth fuckin’ time_ that I’ve had a breakdown like that, Vantas! I’ve never needed help before and I didn’t  _need_ it then! Just because you happen to be so fuckin’  _stubborn_  that you refused to leave me be doesn’t mean you don’t deserve something in return!”

                “Fine. If I deserve something, I get to pick whatever it is my reward is. And when.”

                “Then what is it?”

                “I’ll tell you when I want it.”

                “If you do that, then you’ll never tell me what you want!”

                “I’ll tell you what I want when I want it. And I swear on whatever the fuck you want me to fuckin’ swear on that I’ll tell you. Deal?”

                “Swear on Makara’s life.”

                Karkat silences himself, staring at Dave’s profile in blatant horrorshock. When Dave turns his head over and meets candy-red-iris-with-candy-red-iris, the entire air about them has gone from laid-back to serious, boarding on determined. It makes Karkat swallow and think it over before he nods. “Ok. Fine. I swear on Gamzee’s life that I’ll- I’ll tell you what I want when I want it.”

                Dave nods and then kicks himself off of the couch, rolling to his feet over his head. He wanders away, hands shoved in his jeans, toward the back of the house. Karkat stays lying on the ground, feet propped up on the couch, toes turning cold, wondering what the fuck he just did.

 

) - ( - ) - ( - ) - (

 

                 _Clank. Crash. Clank. Jggalu._

                Dave jerks awake, listening to the noises outside the front door. They repeat over and over, too hurried and rapid to be wind from John’s playful antics. Pure, cold, tendrils of evil curl around his heart as he remembers that it  _can’t_ be John or his windicuff attitude, squeezing all feeling and emotions out of his body until he realizes that that means the noises outside are from  _something else_.

                He pulls his glasses on and shakes Karkat. The Troll grumbles in his sleep, adds in some choice words and tries to bury himself into his pillow. Dave punches his shoulder. He doesn’t even flinch. The noises grow louder. If Dave had to guess, whatever it is is on this side of the sofa. He huffs out his breath, presses his hand over Karkat’s mouth and leans in.

                His teeth sink into Karkat’s earlobe. He jerks awake, making muffled noises underneath Dave’s hand. He pulls away and presses a single finger to his lips. Karkat blinks at him, eyebrows furrowed and lips relaxing from the snarl. More noises, and suddenly Karkat jerks, his fingers on the Strife Specibus cards he keeps at his hips. Dave nods at him, pulls out his sword and watches two scythes jump into Karkat’s hands.

                They jump out of the window before they can be ambushed in the bedroom. The sun is bright and Karkat twists his ankle getting out, but he manages to grab his wrist and run with him in tow. It’s not the first time Dave has had to abscond from a fight, but he still feels just as horrible as he had every other time. He doubts Karkat feels any better about himself, but the bedroom is small and being ambushed indoors would severely hinder any chance they have of getting out of that place alive.

                They run to the next asteroid and jump. Dave hits his front, hard, and grunts. Karkat hisses as he lands on one foot, his knee and his hands. Karkat is still on his feet before Dave is, squinting at the landscape around them and brushing angry red tears out of his eyes at the brightness. “You sure this is the right way?” He grumbles. “I don’t want to wind up back at the House and have to recover lost ground all over again.”

                “Positive,” Dave grunts, takes his wrist and starts tugging him along. “Close your eyes,” he instructs. “If your eyes get fucked up and we end up having to fight, I don’t want to have to bury or burn or whatever you Trolls do to your corpses.”

                “I can fight with my eyes closed.”

                “Not  _well_.”

                Karkat grumbles, closes his eyes and lowers his hands from his face. One of them he returns to his side, the other he holds out for Dave to take. Dave wraps his hand around his wrist and Karkat does the same. They start walking.

                “I can’t believe we were just chased out of that place,” Karkat grumbles. His free hand rubs at the skin in front of his abdomen, barely above his pelvis, and he winces. Dave nods his head, all too aware that he can’t see him, and tugs him along.

                They walk in silence, following the pull of the next asteroid and the next one after that. The sun sets and Karkat opens his eyes at Dave’s beckoning. Their wrists remain interlocked for an hour more than need be before Dave realizes it and rips his hand away from the Troll. Karkat makes no comment on it, only slips his hand into his pocket and puts one foot in front of the other.

                They jump to a sixth asteroid before Karkat huffs, rubbing at his stomach some more and admits “I don’t think that I’ll be able to get to another one.”

                “Same,” Dave coughs. He turns away from Karkat and spits out a mixture of saliva and space rock that, for some reason, has turned black in his mouth. He wants to brush his teeth. He wants to guzzle three gallons of apple juice and gargle with a fourth. He isn’t sure which craving is stronger and doesn’t care for the order it happens in.

                “There’s probably a house somewhere on this Gog forsaken rock.”

                “Let’s find it.”

                “Do we have a choice?”

                “We could always sleep on spacerock instead of a bed.”

                “That’s saying that there’s a  _bed_ there.”

                Dave laughs through his nose, shrugs, and veers slightly off their straight-path course. Karkat follows obligingly. They find the house two hours later, just as the sky is starting to darken in dusk’s first hint of true night, and enter. It’s larger than the last two, empty of residents and somewhat stocked in the kitchen. There’s less than the last house, but they make quick claim to some of the water inside. This time it’s a full-gallon, so they have to pour it into some of the plastic cups in the cupboards.

                There are two bathrooms, one significantly larger than the other but both stocked equally. There are also two bedrooms. One of them has a queen sized bed, the other a full. The queen has plain black-and-grey sheets while the full has black-and-red. Dave slips off his shoes and flops down on top of the full size. His back pops at the sudden change and he groans, eyes slipping shut.

                He hears the springs creak in the queen bed and knows that Karkat took that bed.

                He doesn’t last long, eyes slipping shut after the long day of asteroid walking.

                When he wakes at noon the next day, Karkat is standing the doorway, looking awkward and alone. He’s hunched in on himself, rubbing the back of his head with one hand while the other rests on his hip. “What d’you want so early in the damn day, Vantas?” Dave slurs.

                “I… I couldn’t sleep. And… I don’t know. I was…. Just…. Fuck this!” He spins on his toes, almost leaving the room. Dave calls to him, stopping him in his track and unfolds the other side of the blankets, gesturing him in. He also pulls his sunglasses off, settles on the bed correctly and slips under the covers. He lays with his back to Karkat, even as he feels the bed shift behind him.

                Karkat doesn’t say anything. Dave doesn’t either. Not even as the entire length of both of their backs press against each other.


	6. Marriage

                “Is there some sort of, like, forced marriage shit in Troll society?”

                Karkat looks up from the notebook in his lap, toward where Dave is leaning over the island in the kitchen. “The hell is a ‘marriage’?”

                “It’s… It’s like a matesprite—“

                “Matesprit.”

                “—but it’s made official through the state and it’s… kind’a hard to break. Not impossible, but it takes a while and can cost more than a little bit of money. But, I’m asking for forced, not willing.”

                “A venitard.”

                “A what?”

                “It’s the reason why virgin Trolls cost so much on the Black Market. Trolls are considered a virgin until they have had three yehrnars.”

                “What’s a yehrnar?”

                “I’m… not entirely sure.” His face colors, candy apple red blood rising to dust his cheeks and the tips of his ears. Dave has never seen such powerful show of color before and, quite honestly, it’s almost alluring. He reminds himself, rather viciously, that he’s not gay. At all. Not even a smidgen. “Feferi is… is the only one that got her first. Basically, what everyone knows before going through it is that it’s this really painful thing. It’s…. A yehrnar, if solved through another being like a Troll or, well, probably, a… a Human, causes the Troll that had been going through the yehrnar to be forced into a matespritship or kissmessitude with whoever solved it.”

                “And if it’s not solved through that?”

                “Well, technically, a lusus is supposed to, uhm, solve it.”

                “Solve it.”

                “Yeah.”

                “Your lusus is supposed to  _fuck you_.”

                “I don’t know! Maybe they have some way of just calming it! Feferi didn’t talk about it other than to say that it was the worst pain she had ever experienced! That’s not saying much considering she was the highest fuckin’ Troll on the God damned hemospectrum!”

                “Dude, calm your tits. I’m not attackin’ you or anything. I’m just asking.”

                “Why do you ask?”

                “I was thinking about something my brother told me once.”

                “Which was?”

                “He said that he would set up an arranged marriage for me if I ever wanted one.”

                “Is that… a nice gesture?”

                “It’s actually pretty rude to someone like you, and a slap to the face to other people. But to me… it was looking pretty nice.”

                “Do you think you would have done it? Gone through with it?”

                “Probably, yeah. Bro has good taste in women. Men, too, I guess, but I’m not really sure what constitutes as ‘good’ there. And he would have found me someone I would have liked. I don’t know if it would have worked out, but being married always sounded like something that would be a miracle to me, so why not fight for it?”

                “You’re  _really fucking sentimental_ aren’t you?”

                “I hope you choke on a cock.”

                “I would have to be taught how to do that, first.”

                Dave rolls his eyes and twirls an envelope between his fingers. It’s empty, unaddressed, and it had been left in one of the drawers put into the island, but it’s something to do with his hands so why not? “Anyway, is there any way to get rid of your, um, yehrnar?”

                “No. Well, there are rumors that if you’re, you know, active enough then the next one doesn’t really come or if it does you don’t notice it. Sex is kind-of a  _big thing_ with Trolls, even if you have two people to fuck. We don’t usually have sex until we are one hundred and ten percent sure that we’re deep into whatever quadrant it is.”

                “Is there a yehrnar for black-rom?”

                “No. The yerhnar is the actual… thing. It’s a venitard if you’re stuck in a matespritship and it’s a zurnitune if you’re stuck in a kismessitude.”

                “What’s so wrong with a venitard or a zurnitune?”

                “One? It’s  _embarrassing_ to have to explain to someone how you got into one. Two? It’s… not usually consensual. That’s why there is a different word to it.”

                “Not consensual?”

                “It’s… usually because of rape. Like I said. Virgin on the Black Market is going to get some _thing_.”

                “And this is just a fact.”

                “I am two hundred percent positive that there was a Black Market back on Earth. You’re telling me that you wouldn’t expect a virgin or even a regular person being sold on it to be raped?”

                “No, man, I know that happens on a Black Market. I was  _part_ of the Black Market for  _three fuckin’ years_. I know that shit better than anyone else. But I mean: venitards and zurnitunes aren’t just… punished by some legislacerator?”

                “You would think so, but there are a few of things wrong with that. One? Trolls are immediately loyal to whoever is in their quadrants, whether or not it’s mutual. We have to protect them. It’s in our psychology. If we protect them, then they can’t get to us through them. It’s a way to defend ourselves. Two? If we are to lose the other half of our quadrant, it can take several sweeps, upwards of twenty-thousand, to get over it. Three? The other half of the quadrant isn’t held  _to_  the quadrant. It’s only the one that was raped that was. So they usually hold that over their head, if that’s the kind of relationship it is. Four? Oh God I could go one forever.”

                “No, expand on three.”

                “The other half isn’t held to the quadrant. It’s form of manipulation.”

                “Why?”

                “Well, haven’t you ever been turned on by some hot girl walking by?”

                “Let’s suppose I have been.”

                “That’s kind-of how rape is, only they drop morality so far that they deprive the other of their security and, well, rape them. It doesn’t take emotion, only horniness. So they’re not shoved into a quadrant while the other is forced to wait on them hand-and-foot.”

                “You’re getting better at the Human terminology.”

                “Shut up; I’m on a roll. It’s like… I dunno. Your marriage thing. If you were to get an arranged one, would you really care for the woman?”

                “Eventually.”

                “But if you were to date them first and  _then_ marry them?”

                “Still yeah.”

                “But which one would you be more willing to cheat on in the beginning?”

                “You say this as if I’m in the  _position_ to cheat on someone.”

                “If you were someone else with lesser moral values.”

                “I dunno. The arranged marriage?”

                “Even if she honestly cares for you?”

                “Karkat! I don’t know! It’s not exactly like I’ve ever gotten the chance to look at anyone in my  _life_  that wasn’t my sister!”

                “You’ve gotten to look at Harley.”

                “Under the supposition that they don’t  _know_!”

                “Don’t know what?”

                “Don’t know that I’m-  _no_! No, I know what you’re trying to do and  _no_ I’m not going to come clean that easily.”

                “I’m getting there.”

                “ _Not_ by  _tricking me_! You said yourself that the job of the Knight is to learn how to trust your friends, right? How am I supposed to be able to trust you if you can’t even fuckin’ cool your jets long enough until I’m  _ready_  to tell you?!”

                “This isn’t like your virginity! It’s not something to be treasured; it’s just some  _stupid_  secret!”

                “It might as well be my virginity!”

                “Why? Because you don’t want to admit to something?”

                “Maybe it’s because it’s the  _last thing I have_? It’s not like I have my fuckin’ virginity to flaunt around!”

                “I thought you said that if you were to have sex by the time you’re sixteen, it would be some sort of miracle.”

                Dave’s head pitches forward and he hides in his palms. Karkat doesn’t say anything for a long time. When at last he does, his voice is small and tiny. “I’m just… going to go make you a pile of shit to lie on for a while. How do, um, how do pillows sound?”

                “Pillows sound  _fantastic_ , Vantas.”

                “Right. I’ll just… go.”

                Dave makes a low noise in the back of his throat, nodding his head. Eventually, Karkat tugs at the sleeve of his shirt, then nudges him along with a hand at the small of his back. Dave follows him, letting him take him to the master bedroom. He lies down on the pillow pile, refusing to look at him. Karkat makes a few unsure noises before he decides, aloud, that he’s just going to sit in the living room for a while. Dave says that it’s probably a good idea and buries his head under one of the topmost pillows.

                Karkat comes in every half hour by the minute to check on him. By the third check, he’s absolutely mortified, his face has lost all color and he looks like he needs the pile just as much as Dave feels he needs it. “Look, seriously, motherfucking  _hell,_  Dave, I’m trying, really, I am, but  _fuck,_ I’ve never had to deal with this shit before so  _throw me a bone_.”

                “Shut up. Stop thinking about it. Think about something else. Fact is fact.”

                “You  _shouldn’t_ be  _thinking about_ something like  _rape_ that way, Dave!”

                Finally, he lifts his head and stares at him over his shoulder. “Fact of the matter is,  _Vantas_ , I was raped. Happy? I can say it. I was raped. It’s in the past. The only reason I’m freaking out is because it came out before I wanted it to. So calm your tits; ain’t nothing for you to worry about.”

                Karkat falls, rather unceremoniously, on top of the pile, facing him. Dave takes one of the pillows off the top and hugs it to his chest until he can hide his lips behind it and curl his legs around it. “Fact of the matter aside, Dave, this is still serious shit. I mean… rape. Most  _Trolls_ can’t even do that and we’re a violent race.”

                Dave shrugs his shoulders. Karkat tugs at the pillow until he can see his face again. “Dave, talk to me. Make this a feelings fest, insult me, do _something_ , I just can’t handle all this  _quiet_.”

                “There’s not much to talk about.”

                “Talk about the pillow you have to your chest. Why do you have it?”

                “I feel… I guess… I feel like you can attack me too easily. And the pillow can miraculously help. I feel vulnerable. I… I never exactly willingly told Bro… about the rape. I mean, he knew. Of course he knew, no one just goes and gets  _branded_ for crying out loud, but its different saying it then someone else figuring it out. And I guess I just… I always just wanted to have it not be a thing. Where I could just  _say_ it one day and someone else just take it in stride and be like ‘lowl-whatevs bro’ and pass it off. Because I mean yeah I  _guess_ it’s a big deal but it’s not  _that big_ a deal.”

                Karkat waits for Dave to be silent for an entire thirty seconds—Feelings Fest 101—before he starts. He doesn’t want to cut him off mid-thought. Who knows how bad he could shut down if he did? “I remember, a couple of sweeps back, when Kanaya and I were talking and she cracked a sex joke. It was about kismessitude, but it was pretty over the line—enough to be a rape joke. Everyone else was laughing, but you just looked her straight in the eye and said that it wasn’t funny. I think it’s the only time I have ever seen you not laugh at a joke. And when she asked why, you just started flying off the handle about how people who  _were_ raped would feel about it being joked about. I guess I just kind of brushed it off thinking it was you trying to be ironic or something…. But it really wasn’t, was it?”

                “It was the anniversary of the first time,” he shrugs. “Otherwise I guess I’m pretty chill about it. I mean, it’s one thing to joke about it, another thing to do it entirely. And if you know when to stop, jokes can be a little funny. They bruise and blister, but they can be funny.”

                “First time? How many times?”

                “I… I stopped counting. I know I could sit down and count them all out… but I think I would also go crazy if I knew.”

                “Look at the bright side: it’s not that high.” Dave chuckles through his nose. “Where did you stop?”

                “…two? Ish?”

                Karkat looks like he’s going to be sick.

                “How… did none of us ever know?”

                “I never talked about it. Like I said it’s not-“

                “I swear to God if you say ‘a big deal’ I’m going to break your nose.”

                Dave smiles gently and hugs the pillow closer, nestling his head into the pillow pile. “This is just… the two of us, right?”

                “Yeah.”

                “No weird alternate universes looking in on us, no dreambubbles, nothing forcing us to do it that would create a witness… right?”

                “Yeah.”

                Dave carefully leans his head forward, closer and closer until Karkat takes pity on him and tugs him forward, wrapping his arms around his shoulders. Dave’s forehead presses against his nose and he thinks that this is the closest that he’ll be able to get to him for now.

                “Did you just fucking say LOL as if it were a real word?”

                “It’s an acronym, so why can’t I?”

                “I’m vaguely positive that is an initialization but… whatever. If it makes you feel better, oh God I can’t believe I’m saying this but… L-O-L-whatevs. Bro.”

                Dave shuts his eyes and pretends like he doesn’t feel like a puppy in the middle of a violent storm. He manages a  _completely_  ironic thank you, which can and  _will_ be denied later on in life. Karkat doesn’t say “you’re welcome” and, to be completely honest, he’s not sure what he would do if he did.

                They pull away from each other and don’t say anything.

) - ( - ) - ( - ) - (

                Dave leans on the island in the kitchen, eating yet another sandwich when Karkat walks in. He immediately grabs a boxed juice and leans over the opposite side. Neither of them says much as Dave continues eating and he drinks through the white bendy straw.

                Karkat breaks first. “Those… scars on your back-“

                “What about them?”

                “How… did you, um, did you… get them?”

                “Why are you acting so awkward about it?”

                “You said that you wouldn’t tell me….”

                “I mean I know we’re both still pretty bent out of shape over losing _everything_ , but, I mean, dude. Fuckin’ man  _up_  and ask me.”

                “How did you… get those scars… on your… back?”

                “I can’t hear you over the obnoxiously loud sound of my chewing.” To prove his point, he takes another silent bite and stares at Karkat expectantly.

                “How did you get those scars on your back?”

                “What’d you say?” He reaches across, grabbing for Karkat’s juice drink. Karkat pulls it out of his grasp, glaring.

                “How did you get those fuckin’ scars on your back, Strider?”

                “I can’t quite understand you. Is that Alternian?”

                “ _How did you get those motherfucking scars on the back of your fucking shoulders, Strider? Are you_ deaf _or something? I was holding a perfectly fine conversation at a reasonable level but now you’ve forced me to resort to yelling! Your auricular sponge clots can_ not  _be that damaged considering you’ve been able to communicate at even quieter levels up to this point in time!”_

                “You know me. I don’t take to orders very easily. After I was sold, I had to be  _taught_ how to listen.”

                He growls. “You  _still_ don’t.”

                “I listen to people I fear.”

                “Like  _hell_ you fear Egbert.”

                “Of course I don’t. But he was designated by the entire team to be leader. Besides, when did he ever give an order?”

                “Fair enough.” Karkat pauses, takes in and lets out a long breath. Dave arches one fine eyebrow. “What….” He swallows. “What were you sold for?”

                “I was sold because the jackass who had ‘ _owned_ ’ me originally”—he spits the word out as if it was three-day old curdled milk—“decided he had had enough of me and figured that he had the right to do so.”

                “You were owned before then?”

                “It’s… complicated. To explain. I don’t want to go into details. Just… it was mostly for blackmail. That’s all you’re going to get. Don’t even try for anything else.”

                “What were you expected to do? When you were sold.”

                “Listen to what I was told. Basically, be the shit-boy for some fancy-schmancy, high-class dick that was pretty well fuckin’ off in society.”

                “Like…?”

                “Scrub floors, clean walls, cook for his kids, vacuum, tend to his every need and wish, dust, answer the door, be polite  _and_ be willing to suck him off regardless of time of day, anyone who is present and the amount of my dignity that was tossed away simultaneously.”

                “It… sounds like it could have been worse.”

                “He had a five-floor mansion with over one-hundred rooms. And the other maids and butlers used to shove off their chores onto me and I couldn’t even fight back.”

                “Why not?”

                “Karkat… I didn’t even have a  _name_ there.”

                “Uh… what?”

                “When I was sold, the jackass told the dick my name and the reason that he had come to ‘ _own_ ’ me. The dick refused to acknowledge that I was even Human. To him, I was a dog. Worse. His dog actually had a name. I was just…” He shrugs. “I was just Servant to him. My name was a  _job title_.”

                “How are you not pissed off at all of this?”

                His shoulders brush his earlobes as he finishes the last bite of his sandwich. “I’m bored of being pissed at him. I got bored of it while I was still _working_  for him. Being angry at someone like that is a waste of energy. Besides, fact of the matter is that I was sold and I couldn’t escape for three years. Everything that happened because of it was because of the fuck-weed.”

                “The fact of the matter is  _bullshit_!  _Stop_ hiding behind fact and those stupid, motherfucking  _glasses_! This guy  _took away_ your right as a fucking _living being_! He took your  _name_ —he took your fucking  _virginity_!”

                “No he didn’t.”

                “What?”

                “He didn’t take my virginity. I mean he exploited my lack thereof, but he didn’t  _take_ it. That’s how the whole…  _owning_ thing started with Mr. Fuck-weed-Jackass.”

                “ _Dave_! Are you even  _listening_ to yourself? Your argument is ridiculous! Bullshit! There is  _no reasoning_ behind what you’re spewing!”

                “I’m not arguing with you, Karkat.”

                “ _And why the fuck not_?!”

                “Past is past. Nothing can change that. Even  _I_  know that.” Dave pauses, tilts his head, staring Karkat down. Slowly, Karkat’s shoulders slump and the anger relaxes in his face enough to smooth it into a frown. If even a Hero of Time can’t change the past, there’s no argument there. “And it’s not as if I’m  _proud_ of it or that I’m not embarrassed because, trust me, I’m like a turtle inside it’s fuckin’ shell right now. I’m just not stupid enough to deny that it happened.”

                “What did you do to get blackmailed in the first place?”

                Dave doesn’t answer immediately. He doesn’t shrug, he doesn’t tilt his head and he doesn’t arch his brow. He raises his hand to his jaw, brushes his thumb along where stubble has begun to grow and bites what little is left of his nail between his two front teeth. He hums, though, and it’s the strangest thing that Karkat thinks he could have possibly done in this situation—including stripping naked and jumping on the island to dance in his birthday suit. “Nothing. Be born I guess.”

                “He was blackmailing you over whatever it is that the others don’t know.”

                “Yeah.”

                “…so did you only belong to him and that dick?”

                “How do you mean?”

                “When you were in that slave stage. Were they your only two masters?”

                “Yep. Well. In those three years, the dick was my only master. The Fuck-weed-Jackass didn’t technically own me in the same way. I just did his homework and protected him at school and did all the basic blackmail shit you do when you’re eight and don’t want anyone to know who you like. Does that make sense? I’m a bit rusty on the whole reference thing.”

                “I guess.” He shrugs. “Are the rapes the reason why you’re not”—he makes a frustrated noise and runs a hand through his hair—“what’s the word? Gahd… Gag? Goob? Fuck, is that the reason why you aren’t interested in men?”

                “Gay’s the word. And no. I hadn’t really been interested in them before that anyway.”

                “Are you positive? Because between this story and Rose’s notebook, it was when you were pretty young. Not even six sweeps.”

                “Mmhmm.”

                Karkat nods and finishes off the last of the juice box. He chucks it behind Dave. The cardboard hits a butter knife in the sink, making it ring out in all its metallic glory. Dave plays with a rubberband on the island top, pulling off a few beginner magic tricks that John had showed him. The silence isn’t overly oppressive, but the awkward seeping out of Karkat is enough to keep the air tense.

                “I’m done,” Dave declares.

                “What?”

                “I said: I’m done.”

                “Is this the suicide-warning I asked for? Because if it is it’s  _horribly_ timed.”

                “Huh? What? No. No, fuck, no dude. No way. Besides, I’m God Tier I can’t even—“

                “What? Why’d you stop?”

                Dave’s hands slip up, pull the glasses from his face and run through his hair. “I’m stuck here, Karkat.”

                “Yeah, we’ve discussed this already. Remember? We made plans? We’re going to go to Prospit soon… Going to live out the rest of our years stuck in a universe that neither of us belong to. Do you not remember this?”

                “Karkat, I’m  _God Tier_.”

                “So?”

                Dave turns and meets Karkat’s eyes. Tear-stricken red meets with red-on-yellow, all seriousness despite the obvious pain. “Karkat,  _I can’t die_.”

                Karkat shrugs.

                “You have the luxury of dying after this, Karkat. I’m stuck here. I’m stuck here. For the rest of  _eternity_ , forced to visit with  _your_ dead friends and- and- fuck, I’m going to be  _alone_. After you die. There is no  _just_ death anymore. All the antagonists are dead. There are no  _heroic_ deaths. There’s nothing to save anyone from. I’m… I’m never going to get a reprieve.”

                “Dude, what the fuck? Calm your shit.”

                “At least you have death to look forward to!”

                “Trolls live  _a lot_ longer than Humans. We’ve got a few hundred sweeps ahead of us before I even start to look old. We’ve got time.”

                Dave chuckles and rolls his eyes. “As if  _that’s_ any consolation.”

                Karkat’s lips twitch upward. “If you’re not going to kill yourself, what are you done with?”

                “Feeling sorry for ourselves. I’m done with loafing around because I don’t know what else to do. This is probably the  _best_ fuckin’ part of my life right now and I’m  _wasting it_  because I can’t get my head out of my ass long enough to do anything else. I’m tired of it.”

                “Best part of your life.”

                “I’m over-exaggerating; so what?”

                Karkat chuckles and rolls his eyes. “You’re  _the most_  annoying, condescending,  _idiotic_ fuck-for-brains I’ve ever met. Did you know that?”

                “I’m proud to hold this title.”

                “No your title is Occam’s Idiot.”

                “I bear it with honor and hold my banner high for all the boys and girls to see.”

                Karkat laughs through his nose and walks away. Dave smirks as he replaces his glasses.

) - ( - ) - ( - ) - (

                Dave hugs the pillow to his face. It’s early enough in the day that the sun has brightened the sky, but not nearly late enough for him to pass out from exhaustion. He can feel the dip in the bed beside him, where Karkat is currently lying, and he dares not move for fear of waking him. Karkat’s breathing is shallow and steady, that of a sleeper. Dave isn’t willing to check and see if he’s really in slumberland though.

                The bed shifts as Karkat rolls away. He hears him huff as he stands, obviously frustrated, and makes to leave the room.

                “Where are you going?”

                It sounds like Karkat knocked a shoe into the frame of the door in his shock. The clatter is enough to wake the dead. Dave sits up, searching for his glasses with one hand. “Did I wake you up?”

                “Can’t sleep. Where are you going?”

                “Outside.”

                “Why?”

                “Why not?”

                “I thought the sun did shit to your body.”

                “Alternia’s sun did, but Alternia’s sun does some creepy shit over all. Like making people go blind until they have to learn how to see through smell.”

                Dave hums as he tosses off the sheets. He slips into his shoes and walks up to where Karkat is standing. He goes as far as to hold open the door and gesture with his entire arm for him to go first. Dave follows close behind.

                Karkat squints against the bright sun, shielding his eyes with his hands as he leads him around the house. They sit in the shade, where the sun isn’t as bright, and watch as the horizon slowly gains color and rainbows sparkle off of the dreambubbles. Dave is the first to sit down and hold his weight on his elbows, braced over his knees. Karkat hugs his knees and sits a little too close.

                There’s a huge one not far off. It’s larger than the asteroid they’re on, but there is too much color from the sun to tell whose it could possibly be. Dave thinks it’s probably Meenah’s or Aranea’s from the size, perhaps even Vriska’s or one of Sollux’s other selves’. If it belongs to a Troll, it  _has_ to belong to one with exceptional Mind Powers. It could even be Tavros’—at a stretch.

                “Well,” Karkat sighs. “I don’t suppose there’s any avoiding this, is there?”

                “Nope.”

                “Oh well.”

                Dave chuckles and nestles into his spot as he waits for it to arrive. Karkat does the same—and if their sides brush as they breathe, then it’s a game of chicken and nothing more.


	7. Dream Bubbles

                Blood isn’t all that new a taste.

                For an eight year old boy with a too-skinny stomach, too-pointy elbows, a nose that’s been in a broken state more in the past year than mended, and geeky browline-glasses, he knows that taste a little too well. Looking at him, one would think he’s a geek, someone to blackmail into doing homework for them or cheating on a test, but in reality, he’s strong.

                He’s got some of the best friends in the world after a strange man with a weird chumhandle gave him a Random Encounter on PesterChum and thus he ended up meeting them. There’s ghostyTrickster, someone who lives up near Oregon, then there’s also tentacleTherapist who lives around New York or something…, some _where_  near there, but there are a lot of places near there. Then there’s also gardenGnostalgic who probably lives in Europe or something because she has really weird sleeping patterns compared to his and she’s always up first. He doesn’t know any of their names yet, but he’s planning on telling them his later this week.

                He can fight better than most can. Most of the time, he’s nearly equal against Bro. Even if Bro is going easy on him, he’s still pretty good.

                But that doesn’t mean he can fight off eight people in the back of an alleyway he didn’t want to be herded into in the first place. It doesn’t mean he can bluff his way long enough to get away and it definitely doesn’t mean he can’t stop them when they overpower him within seconds. It does mean, however, that he can lie in a pile of blood and filth afterward. And it does mean that he can pass out. Passing out is fine—for now.

                But still, waking up to the taste of blood isn’t pleasant. Especially not when Jimmy Farfax, the rude computer-genius of his fourth-grade class is kneeling over him, pulling the shade lenses off of his browlines and showing the disgusting, candy-apple, blue-hued, blood-red irises to the world. Jimmy’s brown eyes widen before Dave can even register what happened.

                “You’re…” The boy gasps.

                Dave sits up straight, backs up, closes the shades and keeps going until his back hits the brick wall of the alley. Jimmy’s lips flap uselessly, trying to form words that Dave can’t bear to hear.

                “Please,” he begs. His voice has already broken and the sound of tears isn’t far away. Even during the… the  _fight_ , he hadn’t cried. Tears aren’t something he does. He can be ground into a pulp, beaten and broken in ways people should never have to deal with, but he won’t cry. That’s what Bro taught him to do. To take whatever it is in stride, then to stand back up on his feet and keep going. Because that’s what you need to do in this world. Dwelling makes everything worse and crying  _is_ dwelling, after all. “Please, no, don’t, don’t tell anyone,  _please_.”

                “But… you’re..!”

                “ _Please_!”

                “You… you owe me. If I don’t.”

                “Ok! Fine! I owe you! I’ll do whatever you want, just, please, please _don’t tell anyone_.”

                “Whatever… I want?”

                “Just don’t tell anyone.”

                “…anything?”

                “ _Anything_!” The tears really are flowing now. It’s a horrible thing to sleep, knowing you’re safe and secure, somewhere where no one knows, then to awaken and find that one person can ruin your life with the use of a single word. This is the hardest Dave has cried since he was  _three_  and broke his arm. “Anything,  _please_ , anything.”

                “Ok. I won’t tell anything. But you’re my bodyguard now.”

                “D-deal! Deal. Please, no one.”

                “If you’re my bodyguard, then you have to escort me places, right?”

                Dave nods.

                “Then take me to the bus stop. I have to go home.” He nods again and stumbles to his feet, using the wall for balance. He tries not to fall over, but ends up with a shoulder against a dumpster. Jimmy throws both his backpack and Dave’s at him. They knock him onto his butt, which rips with pain and tears bundle in his eyes. Even Dave can’t tell the pained ones from the fearful ones. He gets his feet under him again and uses the building walls as a crutch.

                Jimmy makes orders, tells him his address, when to pick him up on the way to school next Monday, what classroom he has so that he can meet him for lunch and even demands that he walk him home. Dave nods along, promising to do whatever he wants just so long as he tells no one. Jimmy nods, takes his backpack as the bus arrives and disappears down the street as it departs.

                Dave takes the elevator up and pushes open the door to the apartment he shares with his brother. He drops his backpack and yanks off his shirt immediately.

                “Where,  _the fuck_ , do you think you’ve been?”

                Not good. Bro only curses when he’s  _really_ pissed off. He doesn’t like curse words, especially around Dave, thinking that they’re too immature for Striders, who are obviously more mature and more world-wary than any ever should be, especially at eight years old, going on nine in December.

                “Got the shit beat out of me, passed out.” He mumbles, keeping his head bent even as he walks past him. His shirt hangs off of his shoulder by the sleeve, covering his back. “Just woke up. I really need a shower.”

                Immediately, Bro’s shoulders soften and his voice goes from pissed-off to worried. “Are you ok?”

                “Yeah.”

                “Did they get what they had coming?”

                “There were, like, eight of them Bro.”

                “Ok. Go wash the blood off.”

                Dave hums a quiet thank-you and shuts the door behind him. He turns the shower on as hot as he can handle, then a little more, stripping immediately. He hisses as he gets into the shower, whimpering, his arms shaking as he hugs himself. The water burns, scalding his skin and cauterizing the still-bleeding cuts on his body. He can feel where the dry skin is blistering and how hot his skin his turning. He feels dizzy as he turns it down, just enough to survive but enough to still feel the heat.

                The heat doesn’t last, though. It never does in the apartment, but he still revels in what he has, scrubbing every last inch of his body until what is probably half of his hair falls out and the dry skin on his elbows, knees and feet bleed from the heat. He goes over everything six times and then goes through his hair once more before he puts the numbers together to get sixty-one.

                Slowly, ever so slowly, he pulls the freezing-cold, slightly-hotter-than-room-temperature water free of the hand nozzle’s holder on the wall. He steps forward, hugging the wall, and bends over. He pretends like he isn’t sobbing into the bite on his forearm as he bends over and finds that he’s still too loose. Much too loose.

                He emerges half an hour later, when the lukewarm water has truly gone cold and takes a towel to his bedroom to change into pajamas. In the kitchen, Bro has him take off his shirt and gently applies ointments and lotions to the cuts and bruises. He doesn’t comment on the reddened skin or the brand-new, scab-less injuries on his elbows. He doesn’t even raise an eyebrow as Dave flinches away from fingers grazing sensitive skin. After he finishes and the majority of it is dry, Dave hides in the grey turtleneck sweater he doesn’t quite remember enough to describe. Bro gives him a plate with his comfort-food-pasta and favorite-drink-apple-juice on it, then sits down with him. Dave eats hurriedly, even if Bro doesn’t touch his food. Bro goes as far as to push his plate at him as he finishes. He feels guilty, but when Bro explains that he already ate, he doesn’t have the will to interrogate him and find out he didn’t. He does this enough as it is, being that Dave is a growing boy and all.

                After dinner, Bro goes to sit in the living room and turns television on. Dave joins him, presses his back against his side and sighs as Bro’s arm wraps around him. He feels safe, loved, and like nothing can ever touch him here, even if his skin is sore and he feels like he’s the worst fucking thing on the planet.

                “Can I get on the laptop?” Dave asks gingerly. Bro nods, picks it up off of the coffee table and unplugs it. He exits out of a few windows before Dave can rest it in his lap. He opens his PesterChum file, looks for Ghosty, Garden-Girl and Therapist, but finds that they’re all offline—or, at the very least, have that emotion on anyway.

                He opens the internet and hides in the scrolling threads of 4Chan and views the comments on his new website. Most of them are spam, trying to get him to go to shitty websites, but the ones that aren’t are the diamonds in the rough he needs right now. Bro’s arm tightens periodically, making him want to cry, even if he can’t anymore. He manages to hug it at one point, though, and kisses the faded tattoo of a crow on his upper arm. Bro’s hand tightens around Dave’s shoulder, refusing to let him go, even as he shifts.

                opportuneBerserker [OB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

TG: hey  
TG: youre usually faster to answer especially when you initiate the conversation  
OB: sorry?  
OB: im fighting with my boyfriend  
OB: just uh  
OB: JUST GIVE ME ONE SECOND  
TG: shit dude  
TG: i mean you dont gotta go all capslock on me  
OB: hit the wrong button  
OB: my bad  
OB: but still give me a second  
TG: kay

                He continues scrolling through the new comments, deletes the spam and replies to the questions posed. When he finishes and still hasn’t gotten an answer, he leans his temple against the beak of the crow and puts his hand on Bro’s elbow. Bro gets up two minutes later to go to the bathroom.

OB: kay im here  
TG: so youre a chick?  
OB: what? no  
OB: what gave you that idea?  
TG: youre fighting with your boyfriend  
TG: and if youre not a chick then you must be gay  
TG: right?  
TG: i mean its not like there are three sexes or anything  
OB: there are those out there that are neither  
OB: its not like a sex is ruled by fucking genitals or anything  
TG: semantics arent necessary  
OB: youre eight  
OB: dont use words you dont know the meaning to  
OB: even if you got lucky and used it correctly  
TG: i never told you how old i am  
TG: who the fuck are you?  
OB: your guardian angel  
TG: bullshit  
TG: i dont have a motherfucking guardian angel  
OB: look  
OB: just trust me  
OB: im your guardian angel, out to protect you from fucking psychos  
TG: ok lets pretend like i believe you for five seconds  
TG: ok yeap this trusting thing feels like warm waves of sunshine after a rainy day  
TG: thank you oh great guardian angel now where the fuck were you this afternoon?  
OB: oh  
OB: well shit  
OB: look  
OB: i know you hate the world right now  
OB: and i know youre taking it out on me because im an easy target  
OB: so do that  
OB: you DESERVE it  
TG: what are you fucking bipolar or something  
TG: its like youve got two motherfucking personalities god damn  
OB: something like that  
OB: but just know that if i COULD have stopped  
OB: that  
OB: from happening  
OB: i would have flown across the world to do it  
TG: then why didnt you?  
OB: well that answers simple  
OB: i exist in a different universe  
TG: all joking aside how did you know about it  
TG: my brother doesnt even know  
OB: yes he does  
OB: and hes going to come out of the bathroom in a handful of minutes and demand to know what happened  
OB: and youre going to bluff  
OB: say its from a cut  
OB: and you suppose you bled out more than you thought you did  
OB: but youll get all quiet and reserved as he accepts the excuse and sits against you again  
OB: then youll feel horrible because you want to tell him  
OB: you KNOW you do  
OB: then youll tell him you really are fine  
OB: BUT WE ALL KNOW YOURE NOT  
OB: and youll ask to turn all the lights off eventually so that he doesnt see any tears  
OB: and he will because  
OB: well i dont know why because he just does  
OB: then youll get pissed at me and fly off the handle about nothing  
TG: well all shitting aside i realize why it is you know everything about me yet refuse to help  
TG: and it has nothing to do with alternate universes  
TG: BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THATS BULLSHIT  
TG: youre fucking batshit insane  
TG: youve gone right off the handle  
TG: mad as a hatter  
TG: fallen elbow-deep in a vat of grease at a grill factory  
TG: a cat with only one life left and trying not to kill itself in its curiosity  
OB: oh but thats the thing isnt it  
OB: if were using cat references then  
OB: im the cat satisfaction brought back  
OB: also as a side note the mocking you did was really fucking stupid  
OB: get better material  
TG: i hope you choke on your boyfriends dick  
OB: been there  
OB: done that  
OB: its not very fun  
OB: ITS PRETTY FUNNY THOUGH  
OB: i dont recommend it  
TG: its like there are two of you  
TG: but anyway youre gay right?  
OB: something like that

                “Dave?”

                He turns around, shoving his elbow into the back of the couch as he arches his eyebrows. “Yeah, Bro?”

                His brother holds up the pants he had been wearing earlier. There’s blood from the middle of the belt and down, only stopping near the back of the knees. “Why is there blood on the seat of your pants?”

                “I was… cut. On my back. I must have bled out a lot more than I thought while I was unconscious. You put ointment on it, too. The one on my spine.” Bro waits, as if thinking about it, before he nods. He goes to put the pants in the trash—they barely fit him anyway; they need to go shopping—and nearly makes his way over to sit on the couch.

                Dave feels horrible. His skin crawls and his entire being is screaming at him, urging him,  _tell him, tell him, tell him_ , but he can’t find his voice. His eyes burn and ache with the tears he has stored since he woke. Bro hates it when he cries. He can’t possibly…

                “Ca- Be- Before you- Before you si-“

                “Start over, Dave.”

                He breathes slowly, willing himself to think of the question before asking again. “Before you sit down, can you turn off the light?”

                “Are you going to take your glasses off?”

                 He nods. Bro pulls the screen cover down over the television as he dims the light on the laptop. The light turns off and the blinds shut before Bro sits beside him again. His arm wraps around him, nearly letting him choke on that instead of the sobs locked in his throat.

OB: YOUVE GONE AWFULLY QUIET  
OB: DONT GET ME WRONG  
OB: THIS IS A WONDERFUL CHANGE OF PACE AFTER HOURS AND HOURS OF NONSTOP CHATTERING  
OB: BUT FUCKING HELL  
OB: ITS A LITTLE  
OB: UNSETTLING  
TG: you knew  
OB: knew what??  
TG: you fucking knew all of this  
TG: you KNEW i would do all of that  
TG: you KNEW i would fall for it  
TG: FOR ALL OF IT  
TG: you knew that i would  
TG: you knew that this was going to happen!  
OB: ive known it for longer than youve been alive  
OB: but it gets better  
TG: BULLSHIT  
TG: DONT  
TG: dont pull this on me  
TG: dont use some bullshit campaign gimmick to get teenage gays from killing themselves  
TG: i swear to whatever fucking being exists  
TG: if we EVER meet  
TG: you are EATING my FIST  
TG: i will BEAT YOUR FACE IN  
TG: I WILL BREAK YOU DOWN AND FORCE YOU TO FEEL THIS SAME PAIN  
TG: YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS  
TG: YOU COULD HAVE KEPT THIS FROM HAPPENING  
TG: JUST A FEW FUCKING WORDS  
TG: “HEY THERES TRAFFIC FUCKING WALK THE OTHER WAY”  
TG: OR  
TG: “HEY YOU KNOW YOUR SUBSTITUTE? YOU SHOULD GET DETENTION FROM HER”  
TG: OR ANYHTING  
TG: ANYTHING  
TG: anything

                “Dave?”

                “Ye-yeah?”

                “Are you ok?”

                “Mhmm.”

                “You’re shaking.”

                “Arguing,” he whispers. “With ghost-kid. Over good movies. He… he doesn’t get… good cinema… y’know?”

                “Well, calm down. It’s still a school night.”

                “Bro, it’s Friday.”

                “In my day, kids went to school six days a week.”

                He snorts, but doesn’t laugh.

OB: tell me honestly  
OB: would you have believed me?  
OB: would you have trusted me?  
OB: this is the hardest thing ive ever been forced to do  
OB: and ive been forced to do a lot of shit  
OB: including leaving behind my brother due to his stupid convoluted ways that pretty much got him killed  
OB: but sitting back and forcing myself to not warn you  
OB: that shit fucked me up  
OB: so im sorry  
OB: im sorry i couldnt warn you that you would get raped  
OB: but if i did you would have egged it on  
TG: ….so either way  
OB: yes  
TG: oh  
OB: im sorry  
TG: stop  
TG: just stop  
TG: stop  
TG: change the topic  
TG: anything  
TG: anything but this  
OB: how are egbert and the others?  
TG: egbert???  
OB: oh shit  
OB: my mind is seriously leaving me  
OB: i forgot that you havent  
OB: um  
OB: told each other your names yet  
TG: which ones egbert?  
OB: OBVIOUSLY THE REALLY OBNOXIOUS BIOLOGIST  
TG: uhh  
TG: huh?  
OB: the ghost idiot with no taste in movies  
TG: oooh  
TG: wait does this mean you know the others names??  
OB: of course i do  
OB: i know everyone youre going to meet  
OB: i know everyone youre going to date  
OB: who youll fall in love with  
OB: and who youll give your life up for  
OB: but most importantly i know who youll take it back for  
OB: EVEN IF YOU GIVE IT UP FIVE SECONDS LATER LIKE AN IGNORANT LITTLE SHITMONGER  
TG: ….  
TG: youre really starting to freak me out  
TG: so  
TG: im just supposed to believe you live in an alternate universe  
OB: pretty much yeah  
TG: youre really not giving me much to roll on  
TG: trusting you wise at least  
TG: if you could tell me gardengnostics name and tentacletherapists name too  
TG: maybe i could??  
OB: HAHAHA  
OB: isnt that cheating?  
OB: OH FUCKING DICKENS I TOLD YOU HED ASK THAT  
OB: suck my dick man  
TG: uh  
TG: no shit wait youre really freaking me out here  
OB: sorry  
OB: well halfway?  
OB: anyway isnt that cheating?  
TG: no???  
OB: youll know before they know  
TG: …only for the rest of the week  
TG: i can manage  
OB: garden is jade harley  
OB: ghost is john egbert  
OB: therapist is rose lalonde  
OB: and these three people will be your best friends for the rest of your life  
OB: WELL MAYBE NOT ***REST***  
OB: MOSTLY BECAUSE YOURE A HOPELESS IDIOT  
OB: BUT FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE  
TG: what do i do that makes me such an idiot?  
OB: well thats simple  
OB: you do whats right  
OB: even if whats right means you force people away from their brothers (i.e., you and another guy)  
OB: and even if whats right means you have to make them leave you two behind  
TG: i take it that you wish i hadnt  
OB: …  
OB: double edged sword  
TG: ??  
OB: BASICALLY WHAT HE MEANS IS THAT HE UNDERSTANDS WHY YOU DO IT  
OB: HE WOULD DO THE SAME BE IT HIM IN YOUR POSITION  
OB: BUT CUNT PUNCHING THEM IN THE VAG REALLY ISNT A GOOD WAY OF DOING IT  
OB: THINKING BACK ON IT HE WISHES YOU HADNT  
OB: BUT AT THE SAME TIME THERES NO OTHER WAY  
TG: PLEASE tell me that you and capslock-personality are two different people  
TG: im legit freaking out here  
OB: yeah  
OB: he just hits capslock so that when we glance back we can tell where i said something versus where he said something  
OB: we share this pesterfile  
TG: oh thank god  
TG: but why?  
OB: when we came to this new universe our old chumhandles became virtually useless  
OB: and we just havent made a second file yet  
TG: oh  
OB: thats it?  
TG: is that why we share quirks?  
OB: for the most part  
OB: usually i have punctuation but when ansty mc breathing down your neck pants is doing what his pseudonym implies…  
OB: well its too fucking annoying hearing him hyperventilate anxiously so i just forgo it  
OB: i used to actually use the shift button too but same thing happened  
OB: also why the color is black  
OB: i wanted one color he wanted another so we just switch it to black when were both present  
TG: …  
TG: i tried  
TG: i really did  
TG: but what the fuck do you mean by new universe????????  
OB: well at one point we lived in one universe  
OB: then we played a game  
OB: and now we live in another  
TG: and how do you know what im going to do before i do it?  
OB: well then i suppose that would be because while were also in an alternate universe were also in the future  
TG: bull  
TG: shit  
OB: WE DIDNT KNOW  
OB: WE TOLD YOU WHAT TO DO RATHER BLATANTLY AND YOU DID IT ALL TO THE VERY T  
OB: DOTTED OUR Is FOR US TOO  
OB: AND NOW HES SHITTING WITH YOU  
OB: no im not  
OB: THINK ABOUT IT DIPSHIT COULD WE **REALLY** BE IN THE FUTURE?  
OB: ALTERNATE UNIVERSES ASIDE NEITHER OF US ARE TIME TRAVELERS  
OB: NO MATTER HOW MUCH WE MIGHT WISH WE WERE  
TG: ….  
TG: and i fell for it  
TG: damn it!!!  
TG: how could i be so stupid???  
OB: happens to all of us  
TG: …  
TG: look ive got to go  
TG: and i dont know when well talk next or even if we will  
TG: so  
TG: thanks  
TG: for giving me johns, jades and roses chumhandles  
TG: even if the original message you sent them with was weird  
OB: oh youre welcome  
OB: and actually i don’t know any of that either  
OB: so heres a word of advice  
OB: EVENTUALLY you will end up in a place youll hate  
OB: youll abhor him wish he was never born even consider killing him just to get free  
OB: but youll make it through  
OB: three years after you meet him youll escape after escorting one of his kids to the bus for a fieldtrip  
OB: youll cut through the forest and fall into an open sewage line  
OB: youll be cursing and fighting for days  
OB: and you wont even know if your brother is still waiting for you  
OB: but he will be  
OB: and you will walk right up to the door  
OB: and go to open it  
OB: when you find it locked  
TG: what are you even talking about?  
OB: youll know when you need to  
TG: this isnt shankshaw redemption  
TG: im not climbing through shit  
TG: literally and figuratively  
OB: yes you will  
OB: just you wait  
OB: its the only way you can go without being shot  
OB: anyway the door will be locked and it will look like no ones lived there for years  
OB: there will be a nice old lady in the room beside it though  
OB: shell offer up her shower for you to use and tell you the man that lives there is out of town for a few days  
OB: tell her its an emergency  
OB: that you have nowhere else to go  
OB: unload your whole story  
OB: you wont want to and youll feel wary of her  
OB: but do it anyway  
OB: shell invite you in and let you shower  
OB: shell call the man that lives in your apartment at the time  
OB: and let you stay with her for a few days  
TG: dude serious  
TG: what the fuck  
OB: TRUST ME  
OB: ^^that was me not him  
OB: just trust me and listen to me  
OB: shes a nice wonderful lady and she will even let you keep one of her kittens when youre thirteen  
OB: even if they arent born until may  
OB: or maybe late april?  
OB: i dont actually KNOW that part….  
OB: off track  
OB: stay with her  
OB: and when your brother knocks on her door in three days  
OB: go ahead and cry  
OB: god knows he will be  
TG: what kind of twisted bullshit is this?  
OB: HAHAHA I FORGOT HOW OBSTINANT YOU USED TO BE TO TIME-RELATED STUFF  
OB: thats not saying much considering you two hardly ever talked  
OB: WE TALKED ENOUGH  
OB: you had one conversation  
OB: and that was because you needed to ask him something about egbert  
OB: that technically hasnt even happened yet  
TG: im lost  
OB: WHATEVER  
OB: JUST DONT SHUT OUT LALONDE HARLEY AND EGBERT WHEN YOU GET BACK  
OB: GOT IT?  
TG: you remind me of a boy  
TG: he sent me a package a few birthdays ago  
TG: he wrote in green pen  
OB: and we are leaving now before he flips his lid  
OB: talk to you later strider

                opportuneBerserker [OB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

                Dave right-clicks over OB’s name at the top of the chat, hovering the mouse over the BAN option. He cancels the drop down and closes the chatroom. He logs out of PesterChum and scrolls through a few different threads on 4Chan until the jokes just hurt and Bro knows he’s crying, even if he doesn’t say anything. Dave exits out of everything and shuts down the laptop, leaving it on top of the coffee table.

                Bro pulls him up into his lap and wraps his arms around him hard enough to make his heart skitter. “B-Bro, pr-promise me something.”

                “What?”

                “W- we won’t move.”

                “I thought you didn’t like it here.”

                “I do! I don’t! I just…. I don’t like this universe. The one where I’m- I’m the bad guy- b-because I was born. B-but I like this apartment. This apartment is  _home_. S-so promise me… th-that as l-long as I still live wi- with you… we won’t m-m-move.”

                “What brought this up, Dave?”

                “J- just s-something I- I was t-talking about with B-B-B-Berserker.”

                Bro brushes his hand through his hair awkwardly, but smiles down at Dave. “Well, you don’t have to worry. I don’t have any plans for moving anytime soon.”

                Dave smiles and clings to him. “C-ca-cay-ka-kay-“

                “Start over, Dave.”

                He takes another breath and thinks of his question. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”

                “Did having your butt handed to you really affect you this much?”

                “It’s been a hard day, Bro.”

                “What happened?”

                “You’ve heard me talk about Jimmy Farfax, right?”

                “Complain mostly, but yeah.”

                “He knows.”

                “Then yes. You can sleep in my bed tonight.”

                “Th-th-thank you.”

                Bro pulls away, standing up abruptly. Dave falls to the ground, hitting his head on the coffee table. His head reels, his stomach falls. But something doesn’t feel  _right_ about it at all. Something feels like it’s  _off_. Like that hadn’t really happened like he thinks it had.

                Bro leans over him, taking his shoulders in hand hard enough to bruise. Dave fights, pushing and shoving because this is  _too familiar_ , too _unreal_  and  _please, please, please_ tell him that  _no_ , no  _this isn’t happening_ because this is  _exactly_ what those eight guys did to him earlier and he-

                “DAMN IT STRIDER WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

                Dave jerks, hard, and sits up. His forehead connects with something hard. His head doesn’t crack against the soft tissue of Karkat’s stomach, but his stomach still falls through his ass and plants itself about ten miles into the asteroid.

                “Are you awake?”

                Dave doesn’t immediately answer. Karkat’s hands on his arms flex and he almost seems  _scared_. He’s kneeling over where Dave had been lying moments ago and the tendrils of the visage are leaving, emptying from his mind. When at last Karkat releases his arms and grips his jaw, Dave wraps his arms around Karkat’s middle and tilts his head back to meet with Karkat’s eyes.

                “Yeah,” he finally chokes. His voice is hoarse and breaks. “I’m awake.”

                “Oh  _thank fucking God_ ; I thought you were never going to wake up.”

                “How much of that dreambubble did you see, Karkat?”

                He brushes the angry tears out of the corners of his eyes and smiles breathlessly. “I first came-to when you were being dismissed from class.”

                “So you saw  _all of that_.”

                “Well… yeah.”

                “You watched me… be raped.” Karkat loses what little color he has in his face as he nods. Dave’s hands around Karkat’s waist can’t seem to move. “You watched me lose my virginity.” Again, he nods. Dave doubts he can do anything else at the moment. “I was  _eight_ and you  _watched_.”

                “Well in all technicality,” he chokes, “I tried to fight them off and _screamed_ for you to wake up, but I just fazed through them and you couldn’t hear me. I’ve been fighting this entire time to get you to wake up. I tried to get it before… before it happened. But that didn’t work.” He pulls Dave closer, forcing the Human’s face into his middle and refusing to release him. “But, just, fuck,  _please_ don’t you  _ever_ make me watch something like that again.”

                “No, no, never,” Dave whispers. He shakes all over and everything is in a sensitive state of denial, but Karkat’s arms around his shoulders help make the world seem a lot smaller. They make it easier to remember that this is the present and the past is the past, even if he shouldn’t doubt it anyway. “Never.”

                “Oh thank God.” His hands slip through Dave’s hair, knocking his glasses slightly, but they remain dangling off one ear for the time being. “Thank God.”

                “K-Karkat?”

                “Yeah?”

                “C-Ca-cay-ka-kay-“

                “Start over, Dave.”

                He takes a deep breath and thinks of what he wants to ask. “C-Can I… borrow a shirt?”

                “…yeah. Sure.”

                Ten minutes later, Dave is nestled inside one of Karkat’s smaller turtlenecks and has a box of applejuice between his fingers. Karkat is trying to stay active, cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, doing the dishes and throwing things across the living room to keep his mind quiet, but he’s already cleaned the entire house. When at last he gives up, he flops down next to Dave on the couch and asks how he’s holding up.

                “Better,” he admits. He curls his toes, watching the skin pull around the brand. He does it again and again until his toes all release tiny screams of death as the joints pop. “I never thought I would have to  _relive_ it.”

                “If… it’s any consolation… being raped doesn’t really take your virginity.”

                “Hm?”

                “You  _give up_ your virginity, from what I’ve gathered as I tried to learn your culture. It didn’t last long, don’t ask questions. It was a phase. But you  _give it up_ , and it’s not taken. Being raped is having it ripped out of your hands—taken. I think that… I’m doing a really bad job of explaining this.”

                “You are. And it doesn’t matter, Kark. Your virginity rests wherever the hell you think it should rest and I don’t think I’m a virgin anymore. So it doesn’t even matter. The semantic debate is annoying. Don’t start it.”

                He nods and looks away. “So…. I don’t remember that berserk guy.”

                “I completely forgot about him.”

                “Hm?”

                “We only talked two or three times, that being the second conversation. And the third time we didn’t really  _talk_. I just opened a window and thanked him for telling me how to get back to my bro… after being sold. That’s what he was telling me how to do at the end there. He logged in, like, an hour later and told me that we could talk later. And we never did.”

                “And the first time?”

                “He gave me Rose, Jade’s and John’s chumhandles. Then, he told me that these three are going to end up saving my life someday and we ought to get to know each other already. There were a lot of curses and unnecessary words since it was the capslock guy, not the other guy, but it was pretty obvious that he wanted us to get to know each other. That something important was going to happen. So, on a whim a week later, I did. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

                “Who  _is_ he?”

                Dave frowns, finishes the applejuice and slurps on the empty box obnoxiously.

                “Don’t do that; you’ll give yourself hiccoughs.”

                “He’s… I guess he was right.”

                “ _Well_? Who are they?”

                “I don’t know who  _they_ are… but he’s right when he says that one of them is my guardian angel.”

                “You really believe in that load of bullshit?”

                Dave shrugs, turns his head and meets Karkat’s eyes. “Sometimes,” he admits. “You’ve just got to believe in something. Be it stupid or unneeded or belonging to a religion you don’t follow, you’ve got to have something to believe in. And sometimes that something ends up being the most ridiculous notion you’ve ever heard, but it’s what you need to hear at your time of need.”

                “So he’s your guardian angel because he said he was just after the first time you had been abused.”

                “Pretty much yeah.” He shrugs his shoulders. “But how should I know? Maybe he’s my archangel. One of the two berserkers might be one and the other the other!  _How should I know_?”

                “Simple,” Karkat chuckles. “You talk to them again.”

                “Will that even work?”

                “Maybe. I mean, the rest of the Trolls and I could talk to you when we were in-session and you weren’t. Or maybe we’re shouting at the wrong dragon lusus and it’s the two of us here forever. Either way, we won’t know until you try.”

                “Is that, like, your equivalent of ‘barking up the wrong tree’?”

                “Sounds about right.”

                Dave stares. Karkat holds his gaze. At last, Dave turns his hand palm-up and Karkat smirks as he puts his hand in his. His fingers slip between Dave’s and hold him steady. Dave’s head rests on Karkat’s shoulder and Karkat’s head rests on top of his. Neither of them moves for a few hours.

                When at last they do, Dave slurps one last drink out of the juice box and pulls out his phone. For the first time since he said goodbye to the others, he opens up PesterChum.

                Absolutely no one is on. When he searches through the Troll Slum, he finds that  _carcinoGeneticist[BLOCKED]_  is the only one registering as online. He wonders if those chumhandles could even work if he sent a message to someone.

                turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timeousTestified [TT]

TG: hey  
TG: if you get this  
TG: message me  
TG: this is a test to see if it works

                turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timeousTestified [TT]

                turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering opportuneBerserker [OB]

TG: hello?


	8. If You Ignore It... It Never Happened

                Dave is stuck staring at the screen for ten minutes. Just as he gets ready to close it out, there’s a response.

OB: juuh777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777yujkm,  
OB: hold on let me get this guy to bed

                Karkat jumps. Dave smirks and elbows him, chuckling. Karkat rips their hands apart and threatens to leave. “But you want to know what happens, don’t you?” Karkat’s lips flap uselessly before he falls back into the couch, staring at the screen over his shoulder.

OB: ok I’m here.  
OB: well, wait.  
OB: IM HERE  
OB: NOT HIM  
OB: ITS BEEN A WHILE SINCE WE LAST TALKED  
TG: yeah  
TG: almost letssee  
TG: i was about eleven when i got back from fuckwads house so almost six years???  
OB: HAHA ITS BEEN A WHILE KID BUT NOT THAT LONG  
OB: MORE LIKE THREE MONTHS  
OB: WELL I SHOULDNT REALLY BE CALLING YOU “KID” NOW SHOULD I?  
OB: WERE ALMOST THE SAME AGE AS IT IS  
TG: what?  
OB: WELL YEAH  
OB: ITS ONLY BEEN A FEW MONTHS I GUESS  
OB: MAYBE A LITTLE MORE THAN THREE..?  
OB: WHEN WE FIRST TALKED TO YOU WE FIGURED THAT WE PROBABLY WOULD NEVER NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU OUTSIDE THESE NEXT FEW CONVERSATIONS  
TG: then… what has happened since we last talked?  
TG: if its been years for me and months for you… then what?  
OB: OH SHIT  
OB: I WASNT SUPPOSED TO SAY THAT TIMEFRAME  
OB: HES ALWAYS TELLING ME HOW BADLY I FUCK UP WHEN I USE THIS ACCOUNT  
OB: OH WELL HE WONT KNOW  
OB: FOR NOW  
TG: just dude  
TG: cmon  
OB: ITS LIKE THREE IN THE MORNING AND I HAVENT SLEPT IN A WHILE  
OB: GIVE ME A BREAK  
TG: im waiting  
OB: I DUNNO WEVE SETTLED DOWN SOME I GUESS  
OB: MOVED OUT OF HIS BROTHERS HOUSE  
OB: OR WELL NOT-BROTHER?  
OB: FUCK IT ITS STILL PRETTY CONFUSING  
OB: WELL NO ITS NOT BUT ITS STILL REALLY EARLY  
TG: so you moved out  
OB: OH YEAH I FINALLY QUIT THAT SHITTY-AS-FUCK JOB  
OB: I GUESS THATS GOOD NEWS  
OB: DONT GET ME WRONG IT PAID WELL AND I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST RELIGION ITS JUST…  
OB: WELL ITS AWKWARD PREACHING A RELIGION  
OB: END OF DISCUSSION  
OB: ID RATHER SHOOT SOMETHING THAN PREACH  
TG: …anything else?  
OB: HMMM NOT THAT I CAN THINK OF  
TG: you seem quiet  
TG: i mean i never really got to know you or anything but still youre quieter than i remember  
OB: JUST A LOW NIGHT  
TG: low?  
OB: DEPRESSION  
OB: THAT KINDA BULLSHIT  
OB: ON THE UPSIDE ITS PROBABLY BECAUSE I HAVENT SLEPT IN SO LONG  
TG: maybe you should sleep more?  
OB: I WOULD IF I COULD BUT MY JOB HAS A LOT OF PEOPLE YELLING AT ME TO GET STUFF DONE AT A CERTAIN TIME  
OB: ONCE IT DIES DOWN I WILL BE ABLE TO BEITTHATITMAY THE NIGHTMARES SLOW DOWN  
TG: im not sure if that saying means what you think it does but…  
TG: whatever  
OB: SO WHY THE SUDDEN  
OB: YOU CANT TELL BUT IM WAVING MY HANDS IN THE AIR FOR EMPHASIS  
OB: CONTACT?  
TG: youre the first contact weve had outside of ourselves in about three or four weeks  
TG: wow its already been a month…  
OB: WE?  
OB: I SUPPOSE KARKAT IS WITH YOU?  
TG: uh  
TG: excuse me for looking like a teenage girl on a fangirl spree but…  
TG: wut?

                “That was lame.”

                “Choke on a dick, Vantas.”

OB: YOU WILL NEVER LIVE DOWN THAT SPELLING OF “WHAT”, BY THE WAY  
OB: NEVER  
OB: ANYWAY WHAT ARE YOU “WUT”ING ABOUT?  
TG: how do you know about vantas?  
TG: last we spoke  
TG: on my end at least  
TG: we didnt know each other  
OB: YOU QUESTION THAT BUT NOT THE FACT THAT WE TOLD YOU  
OB: ACTION FOR ACTION  
OB: WHAT YOU WOULD DO  
OB: ONLY A MONTH AGO

                “He’s right.”

                “Don’t fucking remind me, Vant-ass.”

TG: yes  
TG: as evidenced by your earlier remark about our time differences  
TG: and judging by the fact that youre in an alternate universe  
TG: i feel it is safe to assume you already knew that that would happen  
TG: thenceforth it is useless for me to dwell on that  
TG: but how did you know that this troll would be with me??

                “Sounding like Lalonde at this rate.”

                “Are you going to keep your annoying trap shut long enough for me to have a conversation with him or not?”

                “Well, considering most of your conversations are bullshit until the end, I can wait.”

OB: WAY TO MAKE THAT SOUND LIKE ROLAL  
OB: OR WELL  
OB: NOT **OUR** ROLAL  
OB: OR **YOUR** ROLAL?  
OB: OR  
OB: FUCK IT  
OB: THE YOUNGER ONE  
OB: THE OLDER ONE?  
OB: GOD DAMN IT  
OB: WAY TO MOTHERFUCKING SOUND LIKE ROSE  
OB: GREAT MOTHERFUCKING GATSBY WAS THAT REALLY SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND

                “Who’s Gatsby?”

                “Something to do with literature I never read,” Dave shrugs. “Rose knew about him more. I think he’s saying it just to throw us off the fact that he knows Rose too.”

                “He’s the one that gave you her username. It’s safe to assume that he does.”

                “…Ok you’ve got a point there. But it might have been lower-case-guy that gave me it, not him.”

                “For all we know they’re the same motherfuckin’ person and he’s just changing it up because he wants to throw us off. It probably is the same guy and he’s just made up a couple of different stories to make this all sound true.”

                “Or you’re blowing smoke and I’m right.”

                “Choke on a bonebulge.”

TG: …  
TG: but seriously  
TG: how did you know that vantas is here with me?  
OB: HAHAHA YOU STILL CALL HIM VANTAS?  
OB: WOW  
TG: uh  
TG: what?

                “Wait, shit, what? Are you supposed to be calling me something else?”

                “How the fuck should I know?”

                “Well! Ask him!”

TG: am i supposed to call him something else?  
OB: NOT YET  
TG: what am i going to start calling him?  
OB: I CANT TELL YOU  
TG: you can tell me  
TG: some of the most crucial parts of my life  
TG: YEARS before it happens  
TG: but you cant even tell me something THIS stupid?  
OB: JUST FOR THE RECORD  
OB: HES NOW DOUBTING WHETHER OR NOT HES STUPID  
OB: WHICH MAKES YOU STUPID  
OB: YOU STUPID SHIT

                “Uh… wait, what?”

                “That’s  _pure_ hoofbeast-shit!” Karkat snaps. “Don’t even pretend you believe him for one second!”

                “You realize that a new name is the stupid part right?”

                “Obviously!”

                “Kark, you are an idiot.”

                “Why the hell do you believe every little thing that this idiot says without a single doubt in your mind? If he said that your brother fucked Rose then you would even believe that!”

                “Bro was gay but other than that, probably. I mean, why else would he say this shit? What’s the point in misleading me after so long? That would be like me going back in time to tell you not to play SBurb because you’ll be overthrown as leader.”

                Karkat grunts and turns his head away, forcing him to look at his screen again.

TG: fine  
TG: whatever theres no point to that anyway  
OB: WHYD YOU PESTER ME AFTER SO LONG?  
TG: i…  
TG: i suppose you know about how we went through a dreambubble and i relived the second time we spoke right?  
OB: YEAH  
OB: HE WAS FUCKED UP FOR A LITTLE BIT AFTERWARD  
OB: KEPT MUTTERING LIKE IT WAS HIS FAULT  
OB: NOT APPRECIATED  
TG: not my fault  
OB: BUT YEAH I REMEMBER  
TG: well we decided to contact you because well  
TG: theres really no other reason to  
OB: THIS IS THE GUARDIAN ANGEL VERSUS ARCHANGEL THING ISNT IT  
OB: OH MY GOG I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THAT  
OB: GOD*  
OB: THIS?  
OB: MEH  
TG: well? which is it?  
OB: WELL IN ONE WAY?  
OB: NEITHER  
OB: BUT THATS MY WAY  
OB: HIS IS THAT IM YOUR ARCH AND HE’S YOUR GUARDIAN  
OB: YOURS?  
OB: WELL,  
OB: YOU DONT REALLY CARE ANYWAY SO WHY DOES IT MATTER?  
TG: it just does  
OB: ADMIT IT  
OB: THE ONLY REASON WHY YOU CARE IS BECAUSE THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOUVE GOTTEN TO TALK TO SOMEONE OTHER THAN KARKAT FOR A MONTH AND YOURE TOO SCARED TO ADMIT TO YOURSELF THAT YOU HAVENT GOTTEN TIRED OF HIM  
OB: YET  
OB: ALSO KARKAT SHUT THE FUCK UP  
OB: AND LET HIM REALIZE THIS SHIT  
OB: YOU TOO FOR THE RECORD  
TG: well we dont exactly talk a whole lot  
TG: and so thats  
TG: well  
OB: BULLSHIT  
OB: TO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOURE ABOUT TO SAY  
OB: BULLSHIT  
OB: AND YOURE ENTIRELY TOO HAPPY TO BE ABLE TO TALK TO SOMEONE ABOUT YOUR PAST TOO  
OB: YOU NEVER FUCKING TALKED ABOUT YOURSELF  
OB: SO HOW MUCH DOES HE KNOW?  
TG: …pretty much all the bad shit  
OB: UHHUH  
OB: DUDE YOURE MAKING HIM GO CRAZY THINKING LIKE YOU HAD A SHITTIER CHILDHOOD THAN HE DID  
OB: ALL OF THE BAD AND NONE OF THE GOOD?  
OB: HAVE SOME **CONSIDERATION** HERE  
TG: i can honestly say that the asterisk emphasis is fucking annoying as hell  
OB: SUCKS TO BE YOU  
OB: BECAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO OTHER WAY TO DO THIS  
OB: BUT STILL  
OB: TELL HIM ABOUT THE TIME THAT YOUR BROTHER BOUGHT YOU YOUR TURNDECK OR SOMETHING  
OB: DOESNT REALLY MATTER HELL LEARN THE STORY SOONER OR LATER MIGHT AS WELL SPEED UP THE PROCESS  
TG: why?  
OB: HE LIKES THAT STORY  
OB: ESPECIALLY AFTER HAVING TO WATCH SOMETHING LIKE THAT  
TG: are we getting anywhere important with this conversation or not?  
OB: NOT REALLY  
OB: THIS IS JUST A CONVERSATION TO HELP YOU RECOGNIZE THE FACT THAT THERE ARE TWO OTHERS THAT YOU CAN COMMUNICATE WITH IF YOU WANT AND OR FEEL THE NEED TO  
OB: EVEN IF WE **ARE** IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE  
TG: you know  
TG: i would probably care about the fact that youre from a different universe except for one thing  
TG: its really useless to care about something im so used to that there are literally millions of me out here0  
TG: or were  
TG: BASICALLY WHAT HES SAYING IS THAT HE DOESNT CARE FOR OTHER UNIVERSES  
TG: IF WE CAN TALK THEN THANK GOG

                “What the fuck?! When the hell did you grab my phone?!”

                “You’re an idiot.” Karkat snaps. The phone smacks him on the side of his head and he elbows Karkat’s chest. Karkat punches his cheek and Dave drops the phone as he punches right back. They fall to the floor, rolling, punching, biting, kissing until Dave has a nose bleed, his wrists are bruised, his eyes water and Karkat’s lips tickle with the feeling of his blood on them.

                Dave relaxes under Karkat, eyes still wide. With his hands still trapped under Karkat’s hands, near his ears, he has to fight to get them off. His fingers curl in Karkat’s collar, ready to push him off. They break with a popping noise. Karkat grabs one wrist with one hand while the other balances him on the ground over his head.

                “What  _the fuck_ dude?” Dave screams.

                Karkat winces at the decibel level. “I don’t fuckin’ know! You’re the motherfucking not-a-homosexual! Why the fuck does it matter?”

                “You can’t just get your kicks on the Strider Train without permission, dipshit!”

                “We were in the middle of a fight! Do you really think I  _planned_ to kiss you?”

                “You know what I think? I think you don’t understand the meaning of fucking _no_  and you need a  _motherfucking, God damn_ dictionary  _to your face_!”

                “Well if you fucking hated it so much why don’t you punch me again!?”

                Dave yanks him down again, rolls them over and presses their lips together. Karkat makes a muffled noise before his fingers dig in behind his ears. One leg hitches up, his knee pressed against Dave’s side. He shifts his head, pressing harder and harder until Dave smirks and he can slip his tongue in between sly, colorless lips.

                They pull away gasping. Karkat’s eyes are still shut when Dave blinks his open. He presses their foreheads together and only briefly smiles when he feels Karkat’s hands on his face. They slip up under his eyeglasses and thumb the bottom of his eyes. His hands slip down, rest against his neck, then his collarbone and finally he splays them open on Dave’s chest.

                “Well,” Karkat mutters. “I… didn’t exactly expect that.”

                “You’re telling me.” He chuckles. Karkat does the same. “Considering I’m not gay, yeah,  _really_ wasn’t expecting that.”

                “Seemed fuckin’ like you were interested in men.”

                “Kissing is kissing,” he dismisses. He stands up, leaving Karkat on the ground and grabs back his phone. Flopping down on the couch, he cuts Karkat off.

OB: SINCE YOUVE BEEN SO QUIET IM GOING TO ASSUME YOU TWO STARTED KISSING AT LAST  
OB: FINAL  
OB: FUCKING  
OB: LY  
OB: IM JUST GOING TO LEAVE YOU TO THAT

                opportuneBerserker [OB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

                opportuneBerserker [OB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

OB: hey  
OB: karkat has this spot right in the middle of his neck that drives him absolutely crazy  
OB: put three of your fingers together at the nape and tickle just under it  
OB: makes the guy fuckin purr or something  
OB: its amazing once you start playing with different pressure amounts  
OB: also when hes pinned be sure to bite his chest  
OB: he may say he doesnt like it but oh dear god he cant get enough of it  
OB: I THOUGHT YOU WERE ASLEEP  
OB: i thought you had logged off  
OB: SLEEP  
OB: NOW  
OB: ASSHOLE  
OB: well then come lay down next to me  
OB: maybe im just afraid of the nightmares ^,~  
OB: YOU HONESTLY HAVE NO IDEA HOW ANNOYING YOU ARE DO YOU  
OB: i love you too

                opportuneBerserker [OB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

                He files the information away in a place where he vows to never remember it all.

                Five minutes later, Karkat is still lying on the ground, if not because he wants to then because there’s really nothing else left  _to_ do. Dave mindlessly turns his phone between his fingers. Silence falls between the two of them, pushing, pushing, waiting for one of them to break it, both of them unable to.

                Karkat clears his throat. Dave turns his head to look at him, but he doesn’t say anything. Dave shifts in his seat on the sofa. Karkat glances at him. The amount of awkward in the air has created a level all of its own. It’s the Gyroscope of Awkward, the Vacant Air of Dudlery, the- the- the So-awkward-even-Dave-Motherfucking-Strider-can’t-come-up-for-a-name-for-it of Awkward.

                Dave would like to say he didn’t break first, but in all honesty, with neither of them referring to the kiss earlier, it’s not really “breaking”. It’s not ignoring either, however. His hands are still clammy and he can’t bring himself to look in his direction. (If his lips are tingling, just a little, with the small amounts of a bruise, then he won’t even admit it to himself. But they are tingling.)

                “When I was a kid, Bro worked as a DJ. Not a lot of money for two, but for one it had been enough. It took him a long time to admit that to himself. But anyway, he had these turntables set up in the living room. A different set from those he used at work because, well, work’s work and pleasure’s pleasure. We started hittin’ some pretty rough times when I was seven-or-so. When I downloaded PesterChum for shits an’ giggles. Like who the hell is some random, friend-less  _dork_ goin’ t’ talk to, am I right? Don’t answer that. And  _no_ I’m not a fuckin’ dork anymore.”

                “Whatever you say, dork-a-zilla.”

                “Did you just say ‘dork-a-zilla’?”

                “Did your auricular sponge clots break or something, dumb-dumb? I’ll fuckin’ yell it if I have to.”

                “And dumb-dumb.”

                “So?”

                “I should beat you over the head.”

                “John’s piece-of-shit hammer is in the collective sylladex. You want?”

                “ _No_ …. Speaking of that, how many of Kanaya’s cards do we have left?”

                “Two or three? I think? Anyway, you’re not a dork anymore. Although, it’s not healthy to lie to yourself.”

                “Choke on a dick. So, I’m not a dork anymore. Obviously. I mean just fuckin’  _look_ at me. Irony ain’t got shit on this motherfuckin’ bod.  _But still_ , it was just after I had my first conversation with Opportune. Or should we call him Berserker?”

                “O-B works just fine.”

                “After my first conversation with O-B, we started hitting tough times. Bills pilin’, you know? So Bro had to sell the deck. I was, honestly, really bummed. I had just started to get  _good_ at them and he had to go an’ sell them. But I understood, so I didn’t poke or prod about it. I think he was scared for the first few days, thought I would go off on a tangent as if he had just hidden them in the attic or something. But, no, I knew that it was the deck his father—whom he had a really  _damn good_  relationship with—had given him when he was probably younger than we are now. So he wouldn’t have sold them unless he had something more valuable to keep, like his house.

                “I had just come home after the Black Market thing. He had saved up the money from groceries he hadn’t had to buy over the three years that I was gone and we were doin’ pretty good. It all worked out in the end. We were able to get me something better than those shitty browlines or a replica of Bro’s glasses. Think of Dirk’s.”

                “Uh-huh.”

                “Well, he tried to get me to go to a therapist. I don’t believe in therapy, it’s stupid, moronic, all that kind-of horseshit, but he was incessant. So I agreed with him that I would talk to him about every single moment if he didn’t make me go to therapy. He tried to make me see a professional, which I thought was pretty odd at the time but I guess not looking back on it. I denied going to one. In the end, he was forced to agree.”

                “Huh.”

                “What’s that supposed to mean?”

                “Stubbornness  _actually_ pays off.”

                He rolls his eyes. “So I told him everything, starting with the rape from… from the dream bubble. And he wanted to bust some nuts, but I wouldn’t let him. Like the idiot I was. Ugh, fuck, I’m still correcting myself. I wouldn’t let him kill anyone, end of thought. I was pretty-ok for a while after that. I hadn’t really been expecting a birthday gift since I had found my way home only a day or two before my birthday. I had just wanted to wake up in the morning in my bed, I hadn’t wanted a present or a family-party or any of that. But that day he gave me a deck. Said it was to ‘celebrate my coming home’, then a few hours later he made a comment about forgetting it was my birthday. So we had to strife.”

                “Naturally.”

                “Of course.” He nods his head Karkat’s way and ignores the way he grins ever-so-slightly. “I also got a few packages in the mail from the others. Jade. Rose… John. Long, thought out letters.” He taps the arm of his glasses, closest to Karkat. “My glasses. A sweater. A book. I didn’t understand the letters at all. Besides, it had been three years since I’d talked to any of them. Why would they send me anything? So I logged onto PesterChum to ask. Almost forgot my password.” Karkat snorts.

                “None of the three of them were on. Rose and Jade were probably celebrating their own birthdays and John was, well, in typical John-esque fashion, not on because he was worrying himself into a hole. Then again, this is all speculation, but I mean, come  _on_ , how different could the actual thing  _be_?  _Hon-est-ly._

                “I found a bunch of back-logs on my screen. None of them closed out. There were  _hundreds_ of them. I don’t know how my computer didn’t crash from them. But they were also, well, dated. Up at the top. Y’know how you can turn that feature on in options? Well, I usually kept mine off because I  _know_ what day it is. I thought it was weird, but it was probably Bro, y’know? Trying to make sure I kept the same friends. So I started from the earliest and worked my way through. Damn, did Bro have a good Dave-voice because I swear it was _me_ writing them. The conversations flowed correctly, you could see where I was growing in intellect, that sort’a thing….”

                “So?”

                “ _So_ , when I asked Bro about it, he didn’t know a thing about it. Hadn’t been able to stomach logging into my file on the computer while I was gone. We shared a laptop—easier to afford. But he legitimately did not know what I was talking about. He has this tell, when he’s lying. He turned to Cal long before he needed to. Well, Cal wasn’t even mentioned in the entire conversation. So someone else did it.”

                “Is this going somewhere?”

                “I’m getting there. Hold onto your fuckin’ horses, this isn’t the Pony Express.  _So_ I had just brushed it off, thinking that he really did do it but didn’t want to fess-up. Now, I don’t entirely remember what happened in DaveSprite’s universe, ok? But ever since he…  _died_ …, I’ve been remembering small things here and there. Not really important things, but things that I would have liked to know about when he was alive so I could at least thank him, y’know? I’m not _that_ much of a self-absorbed asshole to not know when I  _have_ tothank someone.”

                “Even if it is yourself.”

                “That’s not the point here.”

                “I think it is.”

                “Kark!”

                He laughs. “So, what did DaveSprite do?”

                “When we were first getting the hang of our time-traveling powers, we did a lot of time jumping. Created a lot of Daves because we didn’t know better and didn’t really understand how split-timelines and alternate timelines and past-timelines and future-timelines worked. Well, just after T-Z killed John in DaveSprite’s timeline, he traveled to mine in a desperate attempt to make it, well,  _not_  happen. Except he had gone too far and when he opened up a pesterlog with John, he saw the time stamp he had enabled. He tried to subtly work in not to do that, but John being the immense  _idiot_ that he is didn’t understand. He reread the log… and realized what it was he had just done.

                “He had already missed the first week of my being gone, so  _of course_ Rose noticed that I was gone. She asked him questions and stuff. She must have noticed that something was different since she still kept that journal saying that I was gone for three years. I just don’t understand how exactly she  _knew_ I came back.”

                “It’s Lalonde. Any amount of guesses could be correct with her. What’s the relevance of mentioning this?”

                “Well, there was down time, obviously. He wasn’t going to stay there for three years living under Bro’s nose. That’s ridiculous. He jumped around a lot, kept mostly linear. There was at one moment where he was checking out the deck. I was probably  _supposed_ to be five. He noticed something on it. I don’t quite remember what, but it was distinctive. Well, when I was  _supposed_ to be twelve, I was out for some reason, I dunno, when he popped back in. Probably miscalculated the landing. Well, he was chilling before he had to go to avoid being caught…. When he saw the same marking on my deck.”

                “So it had the same marking, big deal.”

                “The big deal is that it was so distinctive that it would have only been on Bro’s deck.”

                “Which he sold.”

                “Which he tracked down over the years that I was gone and bought back, not so that he could use it but so that  _I_  could have it.”

                “Oh.”

                “Yeah ‘ _oh’_  you big idiot.”

                They rest in silence. With Dave’s story being over and Karkat not adding anything to it, the air, which had been light only a moment ago, quickly becomes heavier. It becomes more obvious that Karkat is thinking about their kisses. It becomes even more obvious than that, that Dave isn’t (but he can’t get the tingling off his mind).

                “Or you.”

                “What was that, Kark?”

                “When your lusus sold his deck, you said ‘he wouldn’t have sold them unless he had something more valuable to keep, like his house.’”

                “I don’t understand why you’re just reiterating what I obviously said. Either clarify or shut your mouth.”

                “I think he was more worried about keeping you safe than he was about keeping his house. With something that important to him, he would have given his house up in order to keep that deck-or-whatever-it’s-called. But with you under his roof, he had to sell them. I mean, you even said-so yourself—you thought it was weird that he was trying to force you to go to a professional to get help.”

                He hates the burning sensation in his cheeks, if not moreso for the fact that he knows the blush has already touched his ears and the bridge of his nose—not much longer for the rest of his forehead, if that hasn’t been infected as well. “That’s not the kind-of guy Bro was.”

                “Are you sure about that? He searched for you for three years. He raised you when he didn’t have to, he bought you the deck that he sold years beforehand because he wanted to keep it in the family, tried to make you go to a therapist when you didn’t want to and even more. He obviously cared for you.”

                “If by ‘cared’ you mean ‘got a break in his taxes’, then yeah. He _cared_ a lot.”

                “You don’t believe that, Dave.”

                He shrugs. “I think I know him better than you, Kark, considering I grew up with him and you’ve never met him before.”

                “Uh-huh….” Surprisingly, Karkat drops the subject. “Want a sandwich?”

                “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

                He climbs to his feet and walks to the kitchen. He’s in there for all of three minutes before he’s walking out with a sandwich-napkin-duo in each hand and eating out of one of them. He hands the other to Dave and takes a seat at the other end of the couch. Karkat’s feet take resident on top of Dave’s. He isn’t sure how to react to that, so he doesn’t.

                Upon the first bite of the sandwich, he discovers that they have apple jelly and creamy peanut butter. There’s enough PB to accentuate the J, but in all honesty there isn’t enough PB to mask the J. He hadn’t realized that he missed artificially-created-and-preserved apples this much. He wishes he had apple juice to go along with it.

                “So we’re just going to ignore the fact that we kissed?”

                “That’s the plan.”

                Karkat is silent for a moment, chewing whatever thought he has in his head along with the bite of his sandwich. At last, he speaks. “Yeah ok, I can do that.”

                “Good.”

                “Good.”

                “Just as it should be.”

                “You implying it isn’t?”

                “Obviously not if that’s how it is.”

                “Oh. Right. Good.”

                “Good.”

                “We’re going in circles.”

                “…we should set up booby-traps, like we did the last time.”

                “I’ll handle that.”

                “…that’s probably a better idea than me helping, huh?”

                “I’d really rather not have another episode where I have to hold your hands, so, yes, it’s a good idea.”

                Dave kicks the underside of Karkat’s thigh. He winces and kicks his shin. The fighting leaves them breathless, on the floor and trying to figure out which sandwich is whose ten minutes later.


	9. Getting It On

                Waking up in the evenings becomes bizarre after their not-ki… after their conversation with Berserker. They always wake up together. Sometimes, Dave finds that Karkat climbs into the full bed with him. Other times, he wakes up in Karkat’s queen bed. Sometimes Karkat is the big spoon, sometimes Dave is. Most of the time, Dave wakes up with Karkat’s hand in his and their noses pressed together. On the nights that are harder to muscle through, he finds his head on Karkat’s chest and the Troll’s arms wrapped tight around him, locking him into place so hard it’s impossible for him to forget that Karkat is there. On the nights where Karkat has a rough time (far more frequent than his), he wakes from a random flash of pain somewhere in his body and manages to lure Karkat in until his head his on Dave’s chest and he has his arms around him. It takes a long time for Karkat to calm, but when he does, his hand fists in Dave’s shirt and he makes a quiet noise in the back of his throat. It’s moments like this where Dave reaches up and tickles the back of his neck. Karkat usually mewls and forces his nose further into Dave’s chest.

                They manage to stay at this place for three days short of a month before they’re ready to shove-off again. Karkat complains about not being able to examine the CaptchaCards Kanaya had kept for the zillionth time since their residency became permanent. Dave just pushes him out of the door and directs him in the way of the next asteroid.

                The jumping isn’t any easier after the rest. Their backs scream in pain, their knees quiver, their feet scream protest at the constant pressure change and their necks have little knives digging into their nerves. After the long wait, they have to remind themselves how to keep pushing on. They’ve been through worse, but after seven asteroids within the same hour, they have to lie down.

                Not for the first time, Dave notices Karkat’s hands on his stomach. He’s pushing at something and his brow furrows when he thinks Dave doesn’t see. Could it be a hernia? He wouldn’t be surprised if the constant change caused one. It would be painful, yes, but treatable as soon as they get somewhere with a doctor. He reaches over to assess the damage, but Karkat slaps him away and rolls onto his feet. Dave rolls his eyes behind his glasses and follows albeit much slower. He’s vaguely positive he twisted his ankle or sprained it at the least.

                The black outline that is Karkat leads them through the shimmering dreambubble light. He doesn’t sense any enemies around, but his stomach is tight and his fingers are twitching, begging for his sword. Bro would be disappointed in him—to think that he would be this out of shape after only a few days. Karkat looks left and right repeatedly, as if searching for something. Dave can tell that he has the same feeling of the eerie omen that is giving him cotton mouth.

                He doesn’t even have time to cry out before he’s off his feet and rolling into a small crater. He hops to his feet. Karkat has his scythes out, blades glinting in what little light there is. Dave’s sword slices through the first amorphous blob. It splits. Karkat’s scythes bleed the larger one through. Back-to-back, they’re surrounded, completely at odd’s end and losing. Karkat nudges his side. He nods.

                He doesn’t like how easily they fight together or how anti-climatically the blobs fall. Karkat holds his hand out for him to help stand up. He bats it away and works on getting closer to the next asteroid.

                “What’s on your mind, Kark?”

                “Nothin’, not really. Just wondering why they don’t have forms.”

                “Dirk and the others didn’t have those towers on Derse and Prospit. When they programmed, their enemies didn’t take forms. I don’t know about your enemies, but ours were imps originally. Theirs must have been space gunk.”

                “I don’t know ours, either. We all programed our lusus before we even got into the game. I never saw them before.”

                Dave nods and jumps. Karkat lands beside him with a low hiss. “You ok?”

                “My stomach,” he waves it off.

                “You’re not injured, are you?”

                “Just vague pain,” he mutters. It’s obvious in just his voice that it’s not  _vague_ , but knowing Karkat, three broken ribs, a missing arm and a leg would still be “vague”. “It’s fine. Probably just pulled a muscle. How far to Derse?”

                “I figure I can fly us anywhere within five asteroids to it, maybe a little more if we’re really that desperate… but it still looks like ten or twenty more before then.”

                “Damn it.”

                “Hm?”

                “We’re probably not going to make it in this walk through. Not at this rate.”

                “I was thinking the same thing. Let’s make five more the goal. We can handle fifteen tomorrow.”

                “Right. Sounds good. Le’s’go.”

                “Are you  _sure_ you’re ok?”

                “I’m  _fine_ , Strider. Back the fuck off.”

                Dave rolls his eyes but nods. The next two asteroids result in him having to help Karkat off his knees. On the third, they battle with a couple more spacegunk blobs. The fourth leaves them both breathless. After their hurried fight, their limbs feel like steel. Dave is willing to forfeit the fifth asteroid to find housing here when his chin makes a hard impact with the ground and he can’t feel his legs anymore.

                There’s an angry, burning slash against his cheek that makes him cry out. Eyes shut instinctively, he hears the tell-tale sound of plastic and glass breaking. He curses, kicking at the enemy. There’s a metallic  _shnnk_. Karkat.

                The feeling returns to his legs just as a hand picks him up under the armpit. He takes Karkat’s hand in his and lets him pull him along. There’s not much of another choice. He only hears one word before he’s being rushed into another bone-shattering crunch.  _Jump_.

                They must have had to abscond from the enemy, because that fight was too quick for it to be otherwise. Karkat is in a fury, spitting curses and trying to make sense of where they are. Dave stumbles and Karkat yanks him back to his feet. He hears the same word before he does just as ordered. The next asteroid is smaller than the last. He can still feel the pull of the one they came from and this gravity field doesn’t crush them as they run along.

                The running slows to a slow jog, then stops altogether so they can pant for breath. In charge of eyes, Karkat glances around. Wordlessly, he takes Dave’s hand and pulls him along. He smells himself entering a new house more than feels it. The entire place smells sweet, like cold air after a summer day. Dave takes three more steps before he spills out on the floor. Karkat joins him. Their foreheads press together and breath intermingles as they try to catch it.

                He feels Karkat put his hand up on his cheek, examining the cut. His mouth is dry, judging by the way he speaks, and he sounds just as tired as Dave feels. “Probably not going to scar, but it’s bleeding a lot for a shallow wound.”

                “All head-and-face injuries do,” he whispers. He has to swallow several times before he can continue. His tongue feels like a brick and tastes like the bottom of a shoe. “Should I even ask about my glasses?”

                “Busted. I can’t see how we can fix them. Maybe alchemize a new pair in the morning? We have a lot of left-over grist. We can probably afford it, so long as they don’t cost too much.”

                “I need water,” Dave mutters. “And then I’m going to crash. I will sleep on the floor at this rate.”

                “Stay here. I want to sew your wound shut, first.”

                “Uh… sew?”

                “Suture. You’ve never heard of it?”

                “Yes I’ve fuckin’ heard of it. I’ve had stitches before! I just… didn’t know you knew how to give them.”

                “Not all that hard. I found a kit in, uh… It was either Harley’s or Lalonde’s deck. Senior… or should it be Junior? Rose’s. It was either in Harley’s or Rose’s. It might have been Terezi's. I don't remember at this point.”

                “Isn’t this something you should have mentioned before now?”

                “No, why would it come up?”

                “It just sounds like one of those things you mention, even in passing.”

                “I just never thought about it.”

                “Are there any other things I should know about?”

                “Not that I can think of. Are you done complaining?”

                He nods and pushes himself up. He scoots around for a moment before his back hits something soft. It’s not necessarily large, and upon a quick search with his hands he finds some sort of lever that attempts to push him up. He assumes it’s an armchair. Karkat drops a water bottle in his hands and orders that he finish it. He isn’t willing to fight him on it and downs it in almost one go.

                There’s a pinch shortly after he does finish it. He tries not to wince. Karkat doesn’t comment on it.

                “Any sign of the blob that ambushed us?”

                “Don’t talk while I’m sewing your face together. And no. It doesn’t seem to have followed us, but I think it got what it wanted when your glasses broke. It actually fled when it heard them go.”

                “Kark.”

                “What? And I said don’t talk.”

                “You stepped on them, didn’t you?”

                “I’m not going to tell you again. I have a sharp needle in my hand with a type of thread strong enough to keep your mouth shut be it that I want to sew your lips shut. Don’t test me.”

                “Kark.”

                “Look, I didn’t mean to, ok? I saw that you were down and that the thing was going at you. I wasn’t exactly looking for something as stupid as your glasses. If you say one more word while I’m sewing your face shut, I’m going to punch you in your so-called dick.”

                It doesn’t take long for him to cut the last of it and pack it up. Dave clarifies, just to be sure, though. “Done?”

                “Yeah…. Three stitches. You really didn’t need any more than two, but it’s between two and three inches, so I wanted to be sure. Don’t need half of your face healing before the other.”

                “I don’t blame you.”

                “For what? Not wanting you to get sick in the middle of us fighting for our lives in a dirty, filth-encrusted—”

                “—Stepping on my glasses. If it were the other way… I would have done the same.”

                “Except now you’re useless.”

                “Only until tomorrow and we finally put to use Jake’s mini-alchemizer.”

                “I thought it was Harley’s.”

                “Does it even fuckin’  _matter_ anymore?”

                “Let’s just find a bed already.”

                “Help me stand?”

                “Get on your own two fuckin’ feet Strider.”

                Dave laughs through his nose, but finds Karkat’s hand with his own. The Troll tugs him away from the armchair and down what he assumes to be a hallway. There are a few doors that open before he’s finally ushered inside one. Dave pulls off his shirt and kicks his shoes into a pile before falling on the bed. He doesn’t bother pulling another shirt on or changing into shorts (though he’s pretty sure he’ll regret that later).

                A clammy hand finds home in the middle of his back. He rolls toward Karkat and presses in closer. Karkat just makes a small noise and inches in closer. Dave’s hand follow’s his arm up to the shoulder. Bare. Empty of a shirt. It’s probably the only time Karkat will ever sleep beside him without a shirt on and he’s missing it because his fucking glasses broke.

                He needs contacts.

\- ) – ( -

                It must be noon. Or, midnight, as the time seems to go these days. Either way, he reaches over and pats the bedside table, looking for his glasses in a foggy-minded state. He finds them eventually, metal arms slipping over his ears. Karkat isn’t in the bedroom though.

                His entire body protests as he walks through the house, quickly ascertaining where the bathroom is and the kitchen. There’s a morning room taking up the majority of the house, but the windows have been smashed down and what looks to be a lot of grist has been left to slowly flicker away or do whatever it is that grist does when it’s not collected. He decides to keep the door to that room locked and bolted.

                Karkat is in the front room, sitting in front of an empty fireplace and staring at an empty card in his hand. He’s frowning, as if the card is some sort of encryption he needs to figure out. As far as Dave can tell, it’s one of Kanaya’s empty ones. Nothing special about it except how it works, really—or, at least, nothing that Dave can think of. “You’re up early.”

                He jumps and looks up. Rubbing at one bruised eye, he shakes his head. “Couldn’t sleep.”

                “After all of our running yesterday, you couldn’t sleep.”

                “It’s nothing.” He sighs and digs the corner of the card under one of his nails. “And I slept some. Just not as much as I would have liked.”

                “You feelin’ any better than yesterday?”

                “Yes an’ no. You sound like you’re still half asleep.”

                “Mhmm. What was in that card?”

                “You’re fucking  _blind_ aren’t you?”

                “I just woke up. I barely even know my own name. Throw a man a bone, will you?”

                “What broke yesterday?”

                “My resolve to get to Derse in a timely matter.”

                “Something that actually had a physical manifestation versus your bizarre belief that anything you think becomes reality.”

                “Well, you don’t have triple-D breasts and your voice still works, so that belief went out the window back when we first entered the Veil.”

                “Stop fucking around, Dave. It’s ridiculous.”

                He rolls his eyes. Oh, right. Eyes. Glasses. The things on his face that keep the light out- wait, what is on his face if his sunglasses are broken? He pulls them off slightly, only enough to see the edges.

                The glass is clear and the frames are too small for his face, but they seem to be doing a fine enough job for now. The brow of the frames connects both eyes, in the middle marked by white scores where a knife had once tried to pry them apart. “These are my old browlines. They disappeared not even a day after I got John’s Stiller glasses in the mail. Where did Kanaya get them?”  
                “There was a lot of play with a transportalizer, the sendificator and the rest of the machines with stupid names. She probably accidently targeted them at one point.”

                “But didn’t Kanaya mostly keep her eyes trained on Rose?”

                “You two have talked before.”

                “Yeah, when I was  _trollin’_  her. Saying I was Rose’s pimp an’ shit. Ain’t nothing serious though. She was just… trying to get a way to make Rose open up and I didn’t know how to considering I missed three years of getting to know her.”

                “I don’t think she really cared who she aimed at. There for a long time, we were pissed at you guys. Kanaya wasn’t one of the main perpetrators, but there were quite a few of us that would aim at something random in one of your four rooms and fuck with you guys. Keep whatever it was for a few weeks in your time and transport it back. She must have thought your glasses would prove to be important later on. That’s all she ever CaptchaLogued, so far as I could tell. I mean, a bag of Cheesy Grub-o’s probably wouldn’t last the three sweep shelf life the cards would give them.”

                “I don’t know. There’s… something fishy about that. I think there’s more to this.”

                “Of course there’s more to it, Strider, because when can a revenge plot ever be  _one-dimensional_?”

                “Don’t get cranky, Kark, you were doing so well.”

                Karkat snarls at him. He braces one hand against the brick of the fireplace and the other presses into his stomach. He pushes pass him violently before slamming the bathroom door shut behind him. Dave hears the shower turn on. He brushes it off to the crankiness and goes to find what’s in the kitchen.

                String cheese, the makings of a ham-and-cheese sandwich, some sort of leafy salad thing that shouldn’t be lettuce but probably is, fruit cubes and, Dear sweet Lord Above, is it really there? Is this true? It’s… apple juice. AJ, bright yellow-orange, completely unopened, blue cap, orange wrapping. This is Heaven. He can put up with all the shit Karkat throws at him if he has this one reprieve.

                It doesn’t take long to find the Holy Grail of all cups and pour the sweet ambrosia in. Doves tweet sweet reunion as he takes the first slow, graceful sip. He downs the rest of it in one go and forces himself not to waste the second half-cup.

                Karkat comes out of the shower cursing up a storm. The bedroom door slams shut. Dave takes another cool drink of his best friend-yet-sworn enemy. The AJ laughs at his foolishness, forcing him to have to finish off the second cup with little remorse. He washes the glass out and puts the AJ back in the fridge. It’s the hardest thing he has had do to for a while.

                The yelling quiets down not long after, replaced with low grumbling and, at last, nothingness. Dave flops down on the (quite frankly,  _lumpy_ ) armchair and busies himself looking through one or two of Rose’s journals. He tries to pester Berserker, but they don’t reply. He figures they’re at work and leaves them be with a quick parting message.

                When Karkat doesn’t emerge three hours later, Dave goes searching.

                “What the fuck did I just walk in on?”

                What he walks in on is the only Troll in the universe with one knee in the air, the other on the bed, pantless, with one arm thrown over his mouth, eyes shut tight and knuckle deep inside an organ Dave is one hundred percent positive men  _do not have_.

                The arm over Karkat’s mouth moves to cover his eyes. His fingers don’t stop moving inside his vagina or, uh, nook? Is that what Trolls call those? He really can’t find it in himself to care. All he wants to do is push the warmth of blood in his gut  _out of his body, away from him, never to return_ because he can still see Karkat’s dick (not nearly as different as he thought it would be). Dick equals male, as far as Dave cares, semantics be damned and  _holy fuck when did it get so hot in here?_  No, no, this is not a Nelly song and clothes will remain strictly  _on_.

                “Damn it, Strider. Either fucking  _help_ or  _leave_.”

                He sounds like a kicked puppy in the middle of a crowd. Whimpering and begging, panting through his mouth and nose.  _Karkat is male, male, male, male, male, malemalemalemalemalemalemalemalemalemalemalemalemalemalemale._

                “What the fuck. Did I just. Walk in. On.”

                “Me masturbating, obviously, you  _bulge_. Dave, please,  _don’t make me beg for you_.”

                “I, uh,  _what_?”

                “Eloquent.” He laughs breathlessly. The hand over his head digs into the blanket and his other leg props up on his foot. Dave has to swallow. “Dave, damn it, I don’t care, just- just fuck me.”

                “What the hell is going on here? You’re trolling me. Hard. There is no way- you wouldn’t be asking this- total bullshit.”

                “ _Dave_. I am knuckle-deep in my own nook. Why  _the fuck_ would I degrade myself so far for some stupid fuckin’  _prank_? I’m not  _Egbert_ , holy fuck, please, just fuck me.”

                “This…. That pain you’ve been going through… th-this is a, a venitard or zurnitune or whatever it’s called. Isn’t it?”

                “A  _yehrnar_ , asshole, the least you could do is remember which is which.”

                “I’m staring at you fucking yourself on your fingers and you expect me to be able to think?”

                “So you are turned on.”

                “ _Karkat_ , this is serious. You’re telling me to fuck you—your first time  _ever_ —and you’re  _expecting me to do it.”_

                “Not  _expecting_ — _praying_.”

                “If this is your yehrnar or  _whatever,_ then you’ll be stuck with me.”

                “Stuck… with you anyway. Dave, God,  _please_  just do  _something_.  _A-ny-th-ing_.”

                “Karkat. Think here.”

                “I  _don’t fucking care_ , Dave. I don’t care. I don’t. You don’t even have to fuck me, just help me get off. I’m  _desperate here_.”

                “I can tell. I- holy fuck, why are you putting me in this position?”

                “Do you really think I want to be on my back, in full view and begging for my once-arch-enemy to fuck me?”

                “Uh  _yeah_. The term ‘kissmessitude’ comes to mind.”

                “We hardly  _hate_ each other, Strider. If anything, I’m closer to pity than hate.”

                “Well, there’s a shocking revelation I never needed to know.”

                “ _Dave_.”

                “Kark, take a deep breath— _don’t hold it_! Mother of All Things Holy, you’re  _serious_ here.”

                “No, I just can’t get off in the shower or with the hilt of my scythe.”

                “I- you fucked your scythe?”

                “No. Blade’s too curved. Too dangerous.”

                “But you considered it.”

                “And your sword.”

                His fingers disappear even further into his nook. Dave feels faint. His pants feel like they’re going to cut off all the circulation in his body. Fuck. He  _should not be so hard_  at the thought of  _forcing Karkat to be in a relationship with him when he doesn’t have to be in the same one_. Holy fuck. Holy fuck.

                “I will owe you,” Karkat begs. “Owe you anything you want. I don’t care what; just give me something longer than my fingers.” It’s a serious whine, complete with guilt complex and everything.

                And Dave really shouldn’t be a hormonal teenager with a vagina right in front of him. Or his now-best-companion begging heavily.

                “We’ve barely even  _kissed_.”

                “And I still trust you enough to fuck me when sex is a  _huge fucking deal_ in Troll society.”

                That’s saying something. “But I’m not gay.”

                “It’s a one-time thing. I’ll turn over so you don’t have to see anything. It’s not like I don’t have a nook or anything.”

                He’s really ready to force all parts of his person away just for this relief. Dave thinks he sees a stray tear fall down the side of his face.

                He’s going to beat himself up over this for the rest of his life, he knows it, even as he feels his knee sink into the mattress. He grabs either side of Karkat’s face and kisses him roughly. Karkat’s hand stills in his nook and he whimpers—whimpers ever so deliciously—into his mouth.

                Dave can’t get his pants off fast enough. He can’t pull Karkat’s hand out of himself quick enough and he can’t apologize enough times as he sinks in. Karkat is sobbing in relief, hands on his shoulders and riding him hard. Dave’s lips nip at the side of Karkat’s neck. He takes it, riding him hard and long. Dave grabs one of his legs and hooks it over his elbow, the other following shortly after.

                Karkat is moaning. One long, quiet noise in the back of his throat, barely loud enough to make his chest vibrate. It hitches, stopping as he holds his breath. Feeling blurs. Suddenly, it’s all Karkat’s nails in his shoulders, on his neck, his arms, everything they can touch. He nips at Karkat’s arms, ordering him to grab onto the mattress above his head.

                Dave isn’t surprised when he listens or when his head flings back or even when he sobs pitifully. Dave can feel how close he is. How desperate he is. The bucking becomes harder. The moans: louder. His legs clench in his elbows. Dave can barely stand to take his hand off of his hip long enough to stroke his dick. Karkat’s body clenches. Almost there. It doesn’t take long for him to get completely hard and even less time for him to splash over his chest. Dave feels himself fall over the edge, even as he tries to keep pushing.  Karkat’s body flinches, clenching even tighter than before. It doesn’t take long for Dave to figure out why Karkat is biting his fingers.

                Dave pulls out and falls to the side. Karkat lays on his back, eyes dazed but quiet. Very slowly, he looks over.

                “I never realized how red your eyes are, Kark.”

                He chuckles through his nose and grins. His lips twitch up after another second. A quiet smile, the kind he never expected from a man as loud as him; quiet and shy, looking through his eyelashes and fighting every urge not to bite his lip. Dave grins back. “I never exactly got the chance to look considering how dark your sunglasses were.”

                “We’re going to regret this.”

                “Yeah. But I don’t think I could have gone through  _another day_ with that pain.”

                “How long have you been going through with it?”

                “Couple of weeks? A little before we got to the last place.”

                “We need to talk about this.”

                “We also need to shower. By which I mean you, because you still reek from the asteroids we jumped yesterday.”

                “I need a nap.” 

                “Same.”

                Dave slips his glasses off and settles in. “So, since I have my priorities straight, I’m just going to take a nap now and freak out about it later. That ok with you?”

                “Preferable, even.”

                Dave laughs through his nose, even as Karkat inches closer to him. Dave throws one arm over his side, pulling him in until he’s hiding in Dave’s chest and has one arm around his side. Dave pillows his head on the other arm and fights off the impending panic.

\- ) – ( -

                “This is unreal. Unbelievable. Kark, are you even listening to me? We’ve kissed barely even  _one time_  and suddenly we’re in bed together. Don’t give me that look; you know how I mean it. We’re in bed together and- and, well, fuck,  _why_ haven’t you hit me over the head with a ton of bricks yet?”

                “I just want to be the one to remind you that I’m the one that forced you into bed, as you say. And I want to know why the fuck you’re practically hyperventilating over this.”

                “Given our track record, Kark, there’s really no reason for you  _not_ to be.”

                He crosses the living room and stands in front of Dave, trapping him in the armchair. He takes his face in his hands, thumbs slipping up under the rims of his too-small glasses and shakes him just enough to force him to shut up whatever thought was going through his head. “Just calm your tits and take a few deep breaths. I was desperate, Dave; quite frankly you did me a huge favor.”

                “And now you’re tied to me emotionally when I don’t feel  _anything_ for you.”

                “So?”

                “Don’t brush it off like that, Kark! I know what it’s like to be unrequited. It  _hurts_ like  _Hell_  so you brushing this off like this  _is not going to work_. Karkat, seriously, don’t you think you’re a bit deranged to say, ‘yeah, I’m stuck in a venitard but I don’t give a shit’.”

                “You finally got the terminology right.”

                “ _Karkat_.”

                “And we’re all a little deranged. Some, admittedly, more than others, but we destroyed our worlds in order to create a new one. Do you really think that we’re, well,  _not_ fucked up _, even just a little bit_?”

                “We didn’t exactly have much of a choice. We thought it was a videogame.  _This was all_ just a  _videogame, but_ it grew legs and plot and  _three years later_ , we’re still stuck in it. We’ll be stuck in it for the rest of our lives, mine  _considerably_ longer than yours. Also, I never thought I’d ever hear you make a crack about Gamzee like that.”

                “Shut the fuck up. I owe you. Stop spazzing. We don’t need to kiss anymore and we’re not going to fuck anymore.”

                He takes Karkat’s hands off of his face and stands up. Karkat takes two steps back to keep the distance between them.

                “Look. Before we fucked, you told me that you will owe me if I helped get rid of the pain. And I did. So I know what I want in return.”

                “Ok. I didn’t expect you to know what you want so soon, but ok. What is it?”

                “I know how hard it is to be feet away from the person you’re in love with and not able to even reach out and brush your fingers against their arm. So I want you to act on those urges.”

                “I’m lost.”

                “If you want to kiss me, I want you to kiss me. I want you to act like you’re a teenager in love, because now that you’ve been forced to have those feelings, there’s no point in hiding them. I want you to hug me when you want to hug me and I want you to punch me when you want to punch me, regardless of the fact that this is, evidently for some  _stupid, asinine reason_ , redrom. Because even people in the reddest of love fight and bitch and throw punches.  _I want you to act on these urges_.”

                “I…  _why_?”

                “Because I’ve been in your shoes, albeit slower coming and hard to go. Even standing this far apart hurt for a long time. So if you want to step closer and hold my hand or kiss my cheek or whatever it is romcoms taught you to do, do it.”

                He stutters briefly and a thick, red hue touches gray skin. His teeth chew his lip and he averts his eyes briefly. At last, he clears his throat. “You are the weirdest person I’ve ever met. One minute, we’re talking about how you don’t like men. The next we’re talking about how you want me to kiss you.”

                “That’s not what I said. I said I want you to kiss me if you want to kiss me.”

                “Dave.”

                “Kark.”

                “You’re ridiculous.”

                “You’re blushing.”

                Karkat shoves his hand in Dave’s face, pushing him away. Dave catches himself on his wrist, laughing gently. “You seem to have calmed down, considering ten minutes ago you were hyper-tense and super annoying.”

                “Well, I guess… I just feel better. About the whole… venitard.”

                “Is that really the whole reason you’re freaking?”

                “Not the whole, but the majority. The rest I’ve chalked up to being a hormonal teenager with little to no outlet.”

                “I know  _that_ feeling.” Dave chuckles. Karkat bites his lip before he steps forward, rests one hand on his shoulder and awkwardly kisses his cheek. “That’s… what you want me to do, right?”

                “If that’s what you want to do.”

                “You’re not helping.”

                “I know.”

                “You fucker.”

                Dave just smirks. The blush that slams Karkat’s face leaves the brand of the Louisville Slugger it used behind. Karkat’s lips pinch together in annoyance, eyes narrowing dangerously against the warm glow.

                “Shut your annoying  _motherfucking_ protein shoot before I shut it for you.”

                “That’s the Karkat I’ve been looking for.”

                “I hate you.”

                “No you don’t.”

                Karkat flips him off and leaves the room. Dave rubs the back of his neck and wonders if that was the right choice after all. Karkat returns less than ten minutes later, red in the face still and biting the edge of his thumb. Dave can’t help but find that adorable. “Hey, just for the record… On the off-hand chance that we ever do have sex again, which we  **won’t** , but I feel like this should be out in the air again, if you’re in my nook, don’t jack my bonebulge off, ok?”

                “Any reason why?”

                “Two different kinds of orgasms. It… kind of left me hyper-sensitive and hyper-aware afterward. I… I don’t really like that feeling.”

                “I would say duly noted, but at the same time we’re never going to have sex again.”

                “Of course.”

                “Obviously.”

                “Why would we?”

                “You can go back to pouting in the bathroom now.”

                “I’m pretty much done anyway. Anything interesting to talk about?”

                “Not particularly.”

                “Wanna sit in front of the fire place and pretend like there is?”

                “It’s almost dawn.”

                “So?”

                He shrugs. “Ok.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not really sure if this constitutes "Mature" or "Explicit", so can you guys just leave a comment telling me which you think it belongs under? It's under Explicit for now, but if enough people say that it's more of a "Mature", I'll switch it back.


	10. Welcome Home

                As much as Karkat hates to admit it, Dave finds their hands intertwined more often than he thought he would. Sometimes when they wake up, other times when they’re just sitting, when they’re having stupid conversations with Shouty-Berserker and funny ones with Quiet-Berserker. Even more so when they wrestle up the energy to go asteroid jumping. They stick side-to-side for the majority of it and when they stop for lunch Karkat kisses the mustard off his face. He tries to kiss his lips, but Karkat pulls away almost immediately after they do touch. Dave has to reach over and pull him over in order to kiss him properly. He feels Karkat smile against his lips and figures it was worth it.

                Derse is as large as ever, but it’s different from the one that Dave knows. There are parts that have been scorched black, the moon is still missing from one of Dirk’s escapades (not that Dave suspects it will ever be back). The R is missing the majority of its curve, the E is hanging awkwardly, scarred from fire and the S is split into two on the diagonal. But Derse is the first stop to getting to Prospit, so Dave tightens his hand around Karkat and pulls him close. He wraps his arm around Karkat’s waist and wraps Karkat’s arm around the back of his neck.

                “When I say jump, do it.”

                Karkat nods and follows orders. Pulling the two of them out of the asteroid’s gravity field is harder than he expected, but he keeps them propelled long enough to fall into Derse’s gravity. Navigating between the wreckage floating around the once-glowing purple planet is easy enough, even if the landing isn’t. Dave takes the brunt of it, given that he lands on his back and Karkat lands on Dave’s stomach. He lays in a daze for much longer than he should have.

                “This place is disgusting,” Karkat observes. Dave grunts and rolls to his feet. They landed on one of the scorched places, where the majority of the buildings lie in ruin and the smell of death permeates the air, seeping further into the soil than it probably should have. Thin lines of white-grey smoke rise from open pipes in the wreckage, from the manhole covers and from the ground they stirred when they landed. “It looks like it’s been torn apart and completely decimated. Like some sort of warfront. Well, I guess like a warfront… I’ve, well, I’ve never seen one.”

                “Same.” Dave sighs as he looks around. There aren’t many ways to go, but he didn’t spend much time back on his own Derse let alone on Dirk’s. As far as he can tell, they’re as different as night and day, considering Dave’s wasn’t destroyed. “I hope you know how we’re getting to Prospit, considering I don’t think I can fly us that far away.”

                “We’ll take the cab system.”

                “The what?”

                “The Carapaces have a cab system set up between the two planets and Skaia. It’s expensive unless you’re working for the Queen or in the army going to fight in the war. But, I mean, think about it, just crops being sported between the two places in trade requires the cab system.”

                “There’s a cab system?”

                “I  _just_ explained that, idiot. You spent three times as much time on Derse as I did on Prospit and you didn’t know? I mean, even  _Lalonde_ knew. Rose. Fuck, that’s really going to piss me off eventually.”

                “One can be RoLal and the other can be RayLal.”

                “Which is which?”

                “RoLal can be Rose and RayLal can be Roxy.”

                “And why is Roxy RayLal? This isn’t some crack on her being ‘bright as a ray of sunshine’ is it?”

                “I was thinking more of the fact that there’s a Y in her name and RoyLal sounds too close to RoLal to really work. But a ray of sunshine works too.”

                “I really hate you.”

                “So you’ve said. How much is it going to cost to take the cab?”

                “We can afford it.”

                “Of course we can.  _You’re welcome_ , by the way. I worked my ass off in the stock market for that.”

                “That must be why you don’t  _have_ one.”

                Dave’s arm hooks around Karkat’s neck and noogies him until he is laughing so hard his face is turning red. When he releases him, Karkat turns and buries his face into Dave’s chest, still sort-of laughing and hiccoughing too. When he calms, he presses a quick kiss to the corner of Dave’s mouth and tugs him along by the wrist.

                It takes three hours to get out of the scorched area without finding another five feet away. Dave is surprised to see life bustling about in the city center, workers working, women shopping, kids running amuck and men chasing after them to make sure they don’t get into trouble. But the thing that strikes him the most is how  _loud_ it is. How loud it is to be around people again when for almost a month and a half it’s just been Karkat and himself.

                Speaking of Karkat, he looks almost scared to be around so many people again. His hands clap over his ears, not tight but just enough to push out the majority of the bartering yells, the commands and the too-high children shriek-laughter. Dave relaxes with the sounds. It reminds him of home, minus the car noise. Houston isn’t always loud if you ignore the rumbles and honks of cars, but there are large places where the foot traffic gets so bundled and bunched that it’s impossible to hear yourself think over the noise. It reminds him of the school cafeteria on pizza day.

                He grins at Karkat, who grins back. He takes the Troll’s hand and yanks him through the crowd, swerving and avoiding the majority of people until the yelling quiets to low mutters—the kind where it’s easy to overhear a conversation and Private Investigators cast in black and white make ridiculously long inner monologues about how “the dame” was hiding something. It’s not hard to find an old Carapace sitting on a barrel-seat and scaling a fish next to a Deli. Dave doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but he’s sure he’s seen weirder.

                “’Ey there boys,” he greets as they approach. “Ain’t seen sights like y’u since aye was a wee lad. W’min, though, she’d’a be. Y’u’two ain’t women, is ya?”

                “No. Listen, do you know where the next cab to Prospit is boarding?”

                “Ah, aye ‘memb’r whin they went back an’ forth six times an’ ‘o’re! Man made good money workin’ a job like that, then that raunchy ol’ she-witch-sea-bitch came runnin’ ‘long wit’ ‘er mane o’ black fire an’ took it’over! Ruin tha’ bidnus, she di’. La’ely they be runnin’ on’y one time a day! One! Har’ly feed y’urself off boons like that, le’ alone y’ur fam’ly!”

                “Listen, we really need to know when the next is leaving.”

                “Why? Y’u supposed to be on it? Don’  _look_  like two kiddos li’e y’u cou’ afford tha’! Bu’, then ‘ga’n, who’m aye t’judge? Jus’ up th’road, kids. Ta’e a left a’ the crossroa’ ‘til y’u see the docks. Cab shou’ leave in ‘bout an ‘o’re an’ uh havv if i’s go’ enough passengares. Aye ain’ heard nu’ne cumplain yit though, so you migh’ be in for a quick ride! Aye’d hurry on ower if aye were y’u!”

                “Thanks, old man.”

                “Y’u’re welcum.”

                They start walking in the way he indicated. It’s only after they’re out of earshot that Karkat asks if he has any idea what he actually said. Dave shrugs. Karkat snorts. They struggle through deciphering the man’s heavy accent, but manage to find the dock and the neon yellow cabs twenty minutes later.

                There are about six of them, all of which look like a New York taxi missing wheels and floating three feet off the ground. Five of them have the word “full” glowing at the top, but the sixth has it’s window down and the driver is looking bored as he takes a drag on a cigarette. It’s a thick-built Prospitan with the hard eyes of a Dersite. Dave runs a little ahead of Karkat to catch his attention.

                “Do you have room for two more in your cab?”

                The driver takes a look between him and Karkat before snorting. “What’re you? Heroes or somethin’?”

                “Or something.”

                “Wanna explain?”

                “Do I have to?”

                “Might get you a discount.”

                “Or might cost me a little more.”

                “Depends on if you’re lying to me.”

                “Well, yeah, we’re Heroes, but we weren’t born on this Derse and Prospit.”

                “You from the joint session White Queen has been talking about?”

                “Yeah.”

                “It’s going to cost you.”

                Karkat answers that as he pulls out the Wallet Specibus. “We can pay. How much you want?”

                “F’r both of you? How’s six thousand boonbucks sound?”

                “Like a hole in my wallet.” Dave hisses. Karkat just pulls the boons out and hands them over. The driver points his thumb to the back door and mentions that they’re scheduled to leave in less than five minutes. The window rolls up.

                “That was cheaper than I thought it would be.” Karkat says. Dave opens the back door for him and slides in after.

                The inside of the car is a lot more spacious than it looks. There are eight others fit comfortably inside, some with babies on their laps and others with hands clenched between them. Not everyone is a Dersite, but the majority of them are. Karkat takes Dave’s hand in his and leans against him. Dave’s hand feels clammy and he can’t make himself meet Karkat’s eye, even in the reflective surface of the section splitter between them and the cabbie.

                He feels Karkat shift to rest the corner of his chin on his shoulder and glances over to see him with his eyes shut. There’s the crease of lingering pain between his eyebrows, the kind that stays after pain has made residency for weeks at a time, only to pack up and leave the moment the cops drive by. The apartment is still trashed and has to undergo a lot of reconciliation and reconstruction to push the ex-tenants out, but time will soon make it obvious that it’s gone. Dave can only wait for it to pass.

                The cabs pick up and leave not long after. It’s nice to be able to sit down for the first time in a long time and know that when he stands up again he’ll be on a completely different planet. He shifts awkwardly every time that one of the other couples spots their hands and shies away from meeting Karkat’s eyes in any of the reflective surfaces in the car.

                Eventually, Karkat pulls himself off of Dave’s shoulder and releases his hand, crossing his arms. He stares pointedly outside of the window off to their side, avoiding the looks of the Dersites and Prospitans with them in the car. There’s a little paper-white woman with golden eyes gently playing with a baby in her lap. The baby’s black eyes stand out brilliantly against its Prospitan skin and its pink gums wrap around the woman’s finger. She takes in a breath and smiles gently, turning her body, ever so slightly, to face them. “I want to thank you,” she mutters. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to go home to my husband if you two hadn’t taken the last two spots in the cabs. Are you two refugees?”

                He tilts his head Karkat’s way for a moment before he shrugs his shoulders. “Something like that, I guess. I mean, there really aren’t many other places to go, after all.”

                Her smile is gentle, understanding. “There are a lot of people coming to Prospit since the start of the war. A lot went to Derse, too, but after it was hit so violently by the Red Miles, most of them returned. You should go and talk to the White Queen. She’s sequestered an entire acre of nothing but apartments for refugees and slowly gaining more! I’m sure she would be happy to give you one. She’s a much kinder ruler than her husband was.”

                “Thanks,” he nods his head, trying to be polite even as he attempts to stop the conversation. He forces the smallest of smiles, the same one that made Jade shut up when she got into a rant by blushing intensely and biting her lips. He still isn’t sure why she would do that, but it worked, so he kept doing it. He’s not oblivious to her obvious feelings, but he still doesn’t understand why. “We’ll be sure to go there first.”

                “Are you two close or did you meet on the travel?”

                “No, we met before then. I mean, it’s a little obvious, considering how we look compared to the rest of you, right?”

                She laughs into her free hand, smoothing it down the top of her child’s head afterward. “Years ago, I probably would have called you out on it, but since this war started it seems like I’m seeing more and more of mixed descent. How you look doesn’t really matter anymore. We’re all counting days, after all. We’re all living together as best as we can. One finds that they don’t linger on appearances when you realize that. Which, by the way, I would like to comment on yours. I like the color of your eyes. They’re quite captivating.”

                Karkat chuckles at whatever emotion flashed across Dave’s face and he elbows him in the chest. His cheeks burn and he smiles ever-so-slightly as he mutters a quiet “thank you.” She settles back against the chair with a nod and continues to play with her child. Dave shoves his face toward the window and Karkat leans against his side just the slightest bit.

                The majority of the cab ride is anticlimactic. Dave expected some sort of space gunk to appear out of nowhere and attack them, to maul them in half and pull them out, threatening to kill them, but none of that happens. The only things that happens even worth noting are that Karkat keeps mostly to himself the entire ride and there’s a brief moment where the cab teeters precariously, a deep, thudding boom of thunder screaming and crying from an abyss far away. Karkat clung to him for a moment, startled, and asked what in the world that was. Dave had just shrugged and answered: “a horrorterror. It was warning us that something is coming to kill us if we don’t go to their side.”

                “And… you’re fine with that?”

                “You get used to it after a while. It doesn’t even phase you. I seriously didn’t even think of it as anything until you said that. I forgot that you can’t hear them all that well from Prospit. Of course, according to Sollux, you can, but it’s muted and faint. It’s almost like an earthquake back on Derse.”

                “And… you just… ignore it?”

                “Pretty much.”

                “Rose didn’t.”

                “Rose is… was pretty infatuated with them. Gave herself to them after her mom died, remember? It’s just that… she’s a rare case. It’s not often something like that happens, but when it does, you just have to let them work through their stuff.”

                “Oh.”

                They touch down on Prospit within three hours, just outside of the Royal Building. The woman that had complimented Dave’s eyes steps out and waves goodbye to them before disappearing into a throng of business people leaving (or going?) to work. Most of the Dersites stay with them and a handful of Prospitans, but most of them leave along with the cabs. Karkat and he take deep breaths and slowly follow the crowd into the building.

                They’re led to a large line of people about the length of half of a ballroom outside two golden, two-storey-high doors and asked to wait for an audience with Her Majesty. Dave flips through old pesterconversations with John and the others, suffering the dull ache in his chest for a laugh for two. Karkat snorts where he’s reading over his shoulder, tapping his shoe as they wait.

                “Y’know, you’d think that your phone would die every now and again,” Karkat grumbles.

                “Perk of the game?” He offers. “But I mean the battery has finally hit something other than ninety-two percent in the past three years. I dunno. Maybe the Game gave up and we’re just stranded.”

                Karkat shrugs and takes the phone from him, opening up a conversation. Within a few clicks on the touch screen, Dave manages to wrestle his wrists enough to see what it is he’s typing.

                turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering opportuneBerserker [OB]

TG: HEY EITHER OF YOU THERE  
OB: well fuck  
OB: look who it is  
OB: karkat vantas has finally instigated a conversation  
OB: you must be bored off of your ass to do that  
TG: WAITING IN LINE TO TALK TO THE QUEEN  
OB: im whistling  
OB: congrats that seems like its taken forever  
OB: only what its been like three or four months since you left the others behind?  
OB: damn  
TG: FEELS LIKE A WHOLE FUCKING PERIGEE

                “Ask him if they’re up to something. I’m kind of bored.”

                Karkat shrugs. “Ok.”

TG: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  
OB: cooking dinner  
TG: i always assumed capslock berserker did that  
OB: sometimes he does but right now he’s kind of busy with working, y’know? I’m not being pressured to not use anything in my quirk, not that I actually have one anymore.  
OB: he’s in the middle of some huge client relations bs. I actually feel kind of sorry for him, i mean like wow no one deserves that kind of bullshit but he puts up with it.  
OB: he really fucking likes his job  
TG: oh  
TG: so then what are you making?  
OB: grilled tofu and bacon sandwiches with a little bit of avocado  
OB: its kind of a celebration because fuck me sideways if avocado isn’t fucking expensive as hell  
TG: EW  
OB: no man don’t be so closed minded tofu is actually really good if you know how to cook it  
TG: ITS GROSS SPONGEY AND TASTES LIKE SOMEONES WASTE-SHOOT  
OB: you should have dave cook some for you its really good  
OB: i mean if he still remembers how to cook it

                “You know how to cook tofu?”

                “Coupl’a recipes, why do you ask?”

                “That shit’s fucking disgusting, don’t even try.”

                “It’s good if you know how to cook it.”

                “Then no one knows how to cook it. It’s fucking disgusting.”

                “I should make some for you then.”

                “Only if you want to die.”

                Dave chuckles and nudges him forward in line, turning back to the conversation along with the Troll.

TG: NOT GOING TO HAPPEN  
OB: your loss  
OB: fine by me though my boyfriend actually likes it  
OB: i mean there are some that he doesnt but he still tries it at least  
OB: put something in front of him and bam down the hatch  
TG: ANYTHING ELSE YOURE DOING OTHER THAN THAT?  
OB: entertaining you as you wait to speak with the queen  
OB: trying not to burn the bacon  
OB: he likes his crispy though so its k  
TG: YOU ARE POSSIBLY THE MOST DOCILE PERSON I HAVE EVER HAD THE DISPLEASURE OF MEETING  
OB: omfgicantbreathe  
OB: just omfg just  
OB: i cant fucking explain without fucking up the timelines this fucking sucks  
OB: its hilarious you just don’t understand fuck it all omfg  
TG: WELL YOU HAVE FUN DROWNING IN YOUR POOL OF HYSTERICS  
TG: WERE OFF TO SEE THE QUEEN I GUESS  
OB: dont be so nervous itll go fine  
OB: talk to you later  
OB: hopefully with more of a concept of an actual conversation than just passing time.  
TG: YEAH WHATEVER  
TG: bye

                turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering opportuneBerserker [OB]

                opportuneBerserker [OB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

                The guards escort them up to the golden door and shut it behind them. On the throne, the White Queen perks up and stands, her smile nearly encasing her whole face as she advances. Dave and Karkat bow with one arm over each of their chests out of habit, even as she pulls each of them under one of her arms and into a large hug. Even as Knights, they’re still privileged enough to have this hug.

                “It has been some time since we last conversed, Knights,” she laughs. It’s not a joyful laugh, nor is it said: it’s almost forced, but at the same time, regal. The kind of laugh that one hears from a queen, though never expects to be heard from anyone. “I was under the impression that you were both on the way to your next world.”

                “We were too,” Karkat snorts. Dave not-so-subtly kicks his shin.

                “We were, but the next universe only had enough room for the others. We wanted to make sure that they made it where we couldn’t.”

                Her smile falters and her eyes dim: the look one would give to someone they pity platonically. She hugs them both again, muttering a quiet apology. “You two have faced challenges none deserve to face.”

                “We’re ok, really, Your Majesty,” Karkat replies, pushing her off ever so gently. She accepts it, though, and takes a small step back. “It’s taken some time to get back to civilization, obviously, but in that time we’ve also gotten over leaving them behind.”

                “Actually, we’ve come to ask you if there are any places we could possibly live in as we get on our feet.” Dave rubs the back of his neck, resting his hand there for lack of anywhere else to put it. “As we don’t have much of anywhere else to go. I mean, we could always go back to Derse, I guess, or start adventuring, but we need our feet first, right?” Karkat nods to his side.

                The White Queen lets out a gentle little sigh and the kindest of smiles. “I’m more than willing to offer you an apartment in the refugee quarter. It’s not far from here and many employers are looking to hire. But…. Have you forgotten about the Red Miles? Prospit is not a safe haven from them. They attack every few days from the Rift in Time you couldn’t fix last we spoke and all we have yet to be able to do anything but repair the damages after they happen.”

                He had forgotten about the Miles. There hadn’t been a single attack the entire time they were away, but now he remembers the scorch marks and odor of death on Derse was because of them. Prospit had to be attacked, too, because Jane and Jake were both Prospit Dreamers. They wouldn’t have targeted only Dirk when they were a constant entity.

                Dave nods, though. “That’s fine. It’s not like we can do anything about them.”

                “There is a group of refugees waiting to be escorted just outside of the door that way,”—she inclines her head, eyes still gentle and soft—“I want to thank you again for all of your help during the war against the Black Queen.”

                They shake their heads in unison. “We just got used to that after our own battles. It’s fine, really. Thank you for letting us into your city.”

                “I am honored to have you two live amongst us for the rest of Prospit’s existence. Have a wonderful day, Knights.”

                They bow again, if only because they truly are Knights and know how to treat a Queen. They thank her for what will not be the last time and wish her a good day, too. They wait for her to retake her seat on her throne to leave.

                In the hallway she indicated, there are about thirty people, sitting on benches along the walls and talking in hurried, excited voices. Most are Dersites, but there are Prospitans and odd grey Carapacians that look to be mixed race. Karkat takes a seat on one of the blue benches and Dave sits beside him. He leans his head against the golden wall and lets slip a small, gratuitous smile. Karkat takes his wrist in his hand and they wait for two guards to escort them away.

                They’re assigned an appartment on the second storey of a three storey building. It’s on the side closer to the capitol, so they can see the edges of the building from one of the windows. Over all it's small: one room, one bath, a kitchen, a living room and a small porch space. They’ve dealt with smaller over the past few months and even worse furniture, condition-wise. Nothing seems to be broken and everything is well-placed to supply optimal room, wherever they are. The kitchen is fully stocked and the bathroom appears to be the same way, so far as Dave can tell.

                He emerges to find Karkat standing in the middle of their bedroom, looking out the window out the golden buildings. His arms are crossed so that he’s holding his elbows and the smallest, most genuine of smiles has graced his lips. He turns his head slightly as he hears the door open and motions him over.

                Dave comes forward and warps his arms around his ribcage, holding Karkat’s back to his chest as he stares out the window. “It feels like barely any time has passed,” Karkat mutters. “Like just a week ago we were stuck on a meteor hurtling itself through the Veil, preparing to fight Noir and everyone. And now  _so much time_ has passed. It’s been almost an  _entire_  perigee but everything is still a little raw.”

                Dave nudges Karkat’s ear with his chin, replacing it with his nose inside Karkat's shoulder a moment later. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I think that getting to Prospit in one piece is pretty damn good.” Karkat chuckles and turns around in his embrace, placing his arms around Dave’s waist. Dave leans forward and presses his lips to the corner of Karkat’s mouth. “Welcome home.”

                Karkat smiles and presses their foreheads together.

) – ( – ) – ( – ) – (

                Nothing drastic in their relationship changes immediately, compared to past months. They fight and argue and bicker. They spend more time up in arms with each other than they do sitting side-by-side on the couch watching a stupid romcom, but the arguments usually end with one of them smiling brilliantly and laughing horribly in each other’s arms as they go to sleep that morning.

                Dave thinks that if it had changed any more than that, he would have gone crazy. But, no, Karkat is still perfectly happy bitching a fit and ignoring Dave for hours. It’s funny, though, when they crawl into bed together how they always seem to make up, no matter what.


	11. Domestic Situations

                “I’m glad that the Red Miles are still happening.”

                Karkat looks up from where he’s reading the online newspaper and sipping on a cup of coffee. Dave waits for the toast to pop up as he sips on his own mug, the majority of the rest of breakfast cooling to a level of warmth where it won’t scorch the roof of their mouths when they try to eat it. “Fuckin’ weirdo. Hundreds of people die every time they hit. I mean, we’ve lived here for a week already and they’ve only struck twice, but that’s a lot of death and destruction.”

                “Exactly.” Karkat’s eyebrows pinch up, confused, and he pushes the husktop away as Dave finishes buttering the toast and brings everything to the table. He picks up a piece of bacon first and tears at it as he continues. “I mean, everyone’s dying. If something were to happen to you and you got caught up in it, I would be able to do something and move on. I wouldn’t be alone anymore.”

                Karkat’s face is a shock of emotions. It goes from confused to realization, a bright, blank canvas to pity to anger. “Don’t you ever  _fucking_ think of getting yourself killed again you asswipe! You’re in this for the long haul, God damn it, and like motherfucking hell are you going to fucking quit on me half way.”

                Dave chuckles and shakes his head. “No plans yet, Kark. Just… I don’t want to be forced to live the rest of eternity without anyone. I don’t know what I’d do if I got stuck living with a bunch of Carapacians, knowing that you’re dead and I can’t even communicate with the rest of our friends. It would be an empty life.”

                “You would fuckin’ move on. I’m not some God damn rock for you to pivot your whole life on. If anything, I’m more connected to you than you are to me! I don’t care what the fuck you do, just don’t get yourself killed for no reason!”

                “I’m not going to do it for no reason, Kark. I’m just saying that I’m actually really glad that there’s at least that option. Otherwise, I would be forced to live the rest of forever stuck in a world I don’t even know. I don’t even have a plan to do it.” He shakes his head and returns to his food. “I dunno. It’s just nice knowing that at the end of all of this, I’ll be legitimately dead. At the end, I won’t have eternity floating around in a bunch of nothingness.”

                Karkat’s face relaxes and his mouth falls open for a minute before pulling into a smile. “Yeah…. I guess that would really fucking suck. But…. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Just don’t get yourself killed before I do, got it? Eat your breakfast, you have work soon.”

                “So do you.”

                Karkat chuckles and they eat in relative silence.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                The days past and months collide before they really even realize it. More and more death climbs around them, but Prospit stays highly functioning. Their boonbucks amassed from the game are rarely ever even touched on and the PesterChum notification noise rarely occurs between them and Berserkers.

                Dave comes home one day to find that Karkat cooked dinner and has a few movies set aside for him to pick from. They sit on the couch and, before they even really notice it, Dave has his arm around Karkat’s shoulders and Karkat’s head is pillowed on Dave’s collarbone. They watch the trashy Carapacians and their horrible concept of a suitable plotline, each complaining about it. It’s over sooner than expected and Dave shifts around to ask him why the sudden movie night when he had been avoiding him for weeks. Karkat leaned up and pressed their lips together, muttering a quiet “happy wriggling day” with a few choice expletives in between.

                Dave hadn’t forgotten, because the notion of forgetting your own birthday is absolutely ridiculous and it’s always there in the back of your mind. You tell people you forgot because you didn’t want to make a big deal about it, but Karkat knew and he hadn’t even said anything about it. He gives Karkat a small kiss and thanks him. It’s the best present he’s gotten since this whole damn thing started.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                Sometimes, not often, they go out to eat. On those days, Dave is unusually distant and Karkat has to fight to even get him to let him tug on his hand and lead him somewhere. They usually come home with Karkat pissed and crossing his arms while Dave goes to pour himself some apple juice.

                Only on the third date does Karkat ask why.

                “I’m trying, really.” He answers. “It’s just… hard.”

                “Well obviously! I mean it’s like if I get even three feet within your proximity you fuckin’ shut down, you tool.”

                He rolls his eyes at the insult. “I’m not used to this stuff, Karkat, remember? I couldn’t even date on my old world. You can’t expect me to suddenly be fine with dating when I was conditioned to think that I can’t.”

                “I don’t expect that… but I at least expect a conversation or two! Eating in silence is pretty fuckin’ boring when we nearly get into food fights here!”

                “Look. I’m sorry. I’m trying. You can’t say I never tried.”

                “Really? Because it seems like you’re trying as hard as you fuckin’ can to not be seen with me.”

                “I’m trying, Kark.”

                “You know what I want to know? You’re so  _fucking willing_ to do this stuff here, why can’t you do half of it out there? I can’t even be thrown into you by some guy on the street without you getting all fucking defensive! What’s the point in going out if all we do is fight about it when we get home?”

                “We fight over everything!”

                “There’s a difference between bullshit to keep sound flinging through the walls and—and fucking  _this_! I feel like I’m fighting to even get one breath in when I’m with you in public and, God damn it,  _you’re_ the one that told me that you wanted me to do what I wanted with our relationship, right? Well what I  _want_ is to be able to walk down the street and not fight to keep up with your absurdly long legs!” Dave opens his mouth to argue but Karkat throws his hands in the air, cutting him off. “Oh who the hell am I kidding, of course you fucking forgot, it’s not like you have much of a memory for _important horsecrap anyway_! I mean no wonder why your friends never found out about some  _stupid secret_ that  _wouldn’t have gotten you killed_!”

                He doesn’t remember crossing the kitchen. All he remembers is the hard rattle of Karkat’s shoulders hitting the wall and the anger ripping from him. “ _Look_ , asshole, I’m going to explain this one gog damned time, got it? So shut your wind pipe and read my fucking lips. Don’t make it sound like I don’t know what it’s like to be in fear of your life from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, even more than that! Because you know what? I do. I’m fucking  _Albino_ in the middle of a war created by idiots  _like me._ It’s  _bad enough_ that I’m the fucking cur in the scum of the gene pool; I don’t need to fucking  _be gay_ on top of that, damn it! Look, I’m going against everything I have, everything I am, everything I was taught,  _just to do this for you, damn it, give me that.”_

                Karkat places his hands on the back of Dave’s head, pressing their lips together, tongues intertwining in a violent display of a dominance-oriented battle. Dave pulls away, red in the face and eyes glaring straight ahead. Karkat smirks, breathless. “Thanks.”

                “I’m fucking  _pissed off at you;_ don’t fucking  _kiss me_!”

                Karkat snorts and does it again, this time a chaste peck of the lips as he wriggles free of Dave’s grip. “I’m going to go shower, considering I’m the calm one for once. You should clean up that mess and think about what you just said.”

                Dave growls as he watches Karkat leave. There’s a giddy step to him, something he fucking hates, and he throws the towel on the oven door after him. He doesn’t seem to notice, so it flutters to the ground where he had been seconds before. Dave kicks at the broken glass on the ground before grabbing the towel he had thrown to help clean up.

                He’s calm by the time that Karkat emerges, chest bare and wearing an old pair of pajama pants. He stops in the doorway and grins, lifting one brow. “Better?”

                “I don’t know why I flipped my shit,” Dave says, tugging at his shoes to pull them off. “Just… I was suddenly so fuckin’ angry. You ok? The wall didn’t hurt you, did it?” Karkat comes forward and kneels on the bed, pulling the blanket up over him. Dave sinks in beside him.

                “I’m surprised you haven’t left yet to be alone.”

                “Why?”

                “You just fuckin’ admitted you’re albino after all the shit that you’ve been spewing about them.”

                Dave shrugs. “I’ve been thinking about telling you for a while now, actually.”

                “Good because it’s so fucking obvious it’s been a chore not to ask you about it.” Dave reaches over and half-heartedly backslaps him. Karkat chuckles and reaches over, pulling him in for a kiss. “Argument’s my fault, though. I know you’re trying. Just… try harder?”

                Dave chuckles. “Apology accepted.”

                “Wasn’t an apology, shit tard.”

                Dave presses their noses together after taking his glasses off and lays down to sleep. He wonders, briefly, when they got to the point where they could get pissed off and argue and make up in the course of an hour when there was no basis to get pissed off at all. He wonders when he started to care.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                Karkat walks back and forth hurriedly, listening to the sound of the Red Miles outside, the haunting sound of screams and the crash of destruction. He can hear it all around them, but it’s slowing down. Minutes ago, it had struck just outside the window. All over the city. Dave hasn’t returned. He hasn’t texted or called, but it’s been five hours since he stormed out and three since the Miles started. They’ve quieted down but he’s left pacing now, digging a rut in the floor as he chews on his nails.

                The door opens and he looks up, desperately hoping, and sighs in relief as it is. He’s bloody and his lip has been chewed through, but he’s alive and well. When Dave sweeps him up into a hug, his arms wrap around his body hard enough to bruise. The force is returned because he really doesn’t know what he would do if Dave was dead.

                Dave’s nose is nestled between his horns, taking in deep, gasping breaths, as if trying to reassure himself that he’s alive. Karkat takes in deep gasps, completely filling his vascular organs with the scent of spice and sweat and, fuck, it feels like he’s going to suffocate in this hold but he can’t risk letting him go.

                “I was on the other side of the park on third,” Dave mutters. “Fucking—the road got cut off. Had to go the long way around. Are you ok? I saw it touch down over here and I thought, oh gog, I thought that you were dead, oh gog. You’re not. You’re not. I was so scared.”

                “ _You_  were scared?” He laughs distractedly, holding onto him as if he were drowning without him because that’s just what he was doing. He was drowning. “I thought you were  _dead_. Fuck, shit, fuck, don’t you  _ever_ fucking storm out of that door when you’re pissed off again, damn it Strider, don’t you fucking dare.”

                “You too,” Dave mutters and pulls away far enough to take Karkat’s face in his hands and kiss him, hard, desperately. Karkat clings to the front of his shirt, groaning, letting himself be pressed against the wall. He’s resurfaced and drowning again, drowning in Strider and all of the fucking “emotions” that he causes. He swallows around Dave’s tongue, listens to him groan and presses against him with his waist when Dave flattens him down. Karkat can feel Dave’s length pressed against him, gasps as he pulls away and licks, tasting the skin on his neck.

                Karkat’s fingers dig under Dave’s shirt, pulling it up and off. Muscles have softened somewhat since they moved here from lack of fighting, but the six pack is still there, the strong pectorals are, the arm muscles, God fucking damn it; it’s been so long since he fucking touched Dave like this and the first time he was the one being touched, not Dave. He can feel the quiver of his nook, the ache of wanting to be filled and, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “If you’re not going to see this through, stop now.”

                Dave chuckles and his teeth press a little harder into the skin around a scar on his collarbone. He’s pushed backward, stumbling blindly down the hall as both shirts are discarded, Dave’s belt and Karkat’s pants. Dave kicks his shoes off haphazardly while sucking at a sensitive spot, pulling hard shivers from his body. Karkat pushes Dave’s pants off along with his underwear, barely getting his own off before falling onto the bed. Dave’s tongue and teeth scrape down Karkat’s chest. He bites his lip to keep quiet, pressing against his leg when it pushes his apart.

                “Holy  _fuck_ ,” Dave grunts, licking a long line along his chest. “You are fucking  _wet_.”

                “Fuck me now Strider or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

                Dave chuckles, returning to suckling at Karkat’s neck. “Don’t get so violent, Kark. There’s really no reason for you to.”

                “Can’t remember the last time you called me by my real name, Dave.”

                He chuckles and lines up, pressing in slowly. Karkat’s head flings back, swallowing down a gasp as he settles in. Dave fishes his tongue out of his mouth, working it hard, making him moan as he slowly pulls out. The heat builds steadily, a spring in his gut, coiling harder and harder, begging to be released. Dave groans over him, the sound of the bed creaking under them, Karkat hums, desperately trying not to make any noise.

                It’s almost over before it started. The spring in his gut breaks and his entire body goes rigid. He’s biting his fingers, trying not to be heard, and Dave pulls out just in time to make a mess of his chest. He presses their foreheads together and Karkat chuckles, seeing the way his glasses have fogged up. Dave laughs back and presses a gentle kiss to his lips. Dave rolls off of him, tells him to stay there, and disappears into the bathroom. He hears the sound of the tap turning on before he returns with a damp rag and drags it along Karkat’s chest. It tickles and leaves a vague sense of lost heat after Dave tosses it over his shoulder.

                Karkat tugs him onto the bed and rolls over, facing him. Dave tugs him forward, putting Karkat’s head on his chest, holding him there, tight, warm. The sound of the Miles outside and the chaos around it still screams, but here, tight in this bedroom, as sappy as it sounds, here is safe. For now.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                Dave spends a week preparing for it. It’s a few months after their year-aversary-of-moving-in and Karkat has been working his ass off planning a computer system to predict when and where the next round of Miles is going to strike. He’s either constantly working on his husktop or sleeping, eating to be done in front of the computer and in front of the computer only.

                He bakes and hides it under an opaque plastic lid with a note saying not to lift it. He scours the internet for recipes and, when he finally finds one, he spends another three hours looking up as many different ways of instructions and what he can substitute for what. He comes up with about five different recipes that he can find the instructions to, only after he asks Karkat to write out the Alternian alphabet with English equivalents. The question didn’t even get him weird looks, just absentminded writing.

                It takes five hours to get Karkat to take a walk, resulting only in kicking him out of the house for half an hour. He works fast, following instructions almost too quick for him to possibly be doing them correctly. Karkat returns, just at the time he’s supposed to, and slams the door shut, demanding to know why the fuck he would kick him out. Dave sits him down at the table, listening to him ramble, and places the bowl of “stew” in front of him.

                He finds that it’s not as gross as some of the ingredients made it sound like it would be. Karkat nearly freezes when he takes his first bite and finishes off his bowl fast enough to give Dave hiccoughs. Karkat goes for seconds without hesitance. Dave does dishes afterward, handing him a handful of movies and telling him to put one of them in. Karkat shrugs and does so, sitting on the couch with a tummy full of comfort food.

                Dave sighs as he sits beside him and pulls Karkat in nice and close. They sit and watch the still-horrible movies one-by-one, a nice night tucked into the couch. Eventually, Dave pulls out the cake he baked the day before. It’s not too sweet, but it’s enough for it to be a celebration. Karkat finally catches on around the time that he cuts two pieces and passes one to him. The smile on the Troll’s face is sickeningly sweet as his entire façade of anger and confusion melts away. He eats the cake happily with a small little smile on his face.

                Dave wraps his arms around his waist and chuckles when Karkat’s wrap around his, too.  “Happy Birthday, Kark.”

                Karkat presses his lips to Dave’s, the smallest of little flutterings, enough to tease and taunt, like in the books. “Thanks, idiot.”

                “Do you have to ruin a perfectly good moment with an insult?”

                “Every single opportunity I get.”

                Dave kisses him and presses his nose against Karkat’s cheekbone. “How long have we been in this game now?”

                “A very,” he sighs, “very long time. C’mon… bedtime.”

                Dave finds it hard to believe it’s almost been three sweeps. His nineteenth birthday is the next to come.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                Work comes and goes. They do jobs for Her Majesty whenever possible, sometimes they clean up a shop or help fix a building, but over all they don’t have a singular, round-the-clock, nine-to-five job. Whatever they do that day leaves them either emotionally drained while their bodies thirst for use or they work physically tiring jobs that let their minds wander much, much too far.

                The days where their minds just so happen to be wandering together end with them sitting on the place rug in the living room and one of their laptops out in the middle between them.

                opportuneBerserker [OB] changed his mood to —SMOOTH—

                turntechGodhead [TG] changed his mood to —SLEEK—

OB: WHAT YOU GOT STRIDER  
TG: a whooping hand of kick ass  
TG: you want to see it or do you just want to fold now?  
OB: alright that’s a four-of-a-kind Seven, right?  
OB: ive got a pair of twos  
OB: MATCHED 8s  
TG: WERE FUCKING PLAYING GO FISH YOU IDIOTS DONT MAKE IT SOUND LIKE WERE PLAYING POKER

                Dave laughs and puts his arm around Karkat. He’s gotten used to contact over the year and a half they’ve lived together.

OB: but its funny  
OB: ITS LAME  
OB: you were doing it too  
OB: I GET SEX OUT OF YOU WHEN I DO  
OB: not with that attitude you dont  
OB: LOVE YOU???  
OB: getting there  
TG: PLEASE MY TEETH ARE ROTTING OUT OF MY WIND FLAP FROM THE MERE SWEETNESS OF YOUR GOD DAMN CONVERSATION  
TG: shuddup kark its adorable  
OB: you cant tell but im whistling  
OB: im impressed that it only took this long for you to resort to calling him “kark”  
OB: FEELS LIKE IT TOOK FOREVER FOR THAT TO HAPPEN  
OB: mmhmmm  
TG: ive been calling him that for a while now  
TG: why?  
TG: is there something else im supposed to be calling him?  
OB: NOPE YOURE SUPPOSED TO BE CALLING HIM KARK  
OB: :)  
OB: the smiley is mine not his

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                The Red Miles destroy the far off cities without hesitating. It’s a disgusting kind of beauty, the kind where the screams of terror don’t even mean anything anymore. It’s the horrific, blood curdling kind of beauty that finds home deep inside your soul, where all you want to do is look away but you’re rooted to the spot, unable to move. It leaves Dave sitting on the roof of their apartment complex, watching as another city falls prey to an enemy they can barely even predict. The program Karkat made last perigee was enough to get those unwilling to die to leave the city, but not much can be done when the planet had once been a single city of itself.

                Karkat finds his way out of the apartment and tugged into Dave’s lap about an hour after the newest attack began. Karkat’s back rests against Dave’s chest, grey fingers lingering on the skin of Dave’s wrists as they stare off into the distance. Karkat’s sides are protected by the angle of Dave’s legs, protecting him as best as he can in the position.

                It’s a gross, horrific kind of beauty when screams of terror become choir angels and death and destruction become Picasso and Monet. But they can’t look away, only forced to watch as Dave’s lips linger on the side of Karkat’s neck.

                “You told me a long time ago that you pitied someone that you played the game with, right?”

                Dave hums, nodding his head as one hand catches Karkat’s in it, smoothing over the calluses and the soft parts on the back. “Yeah, I did.”

                “Which one was it?”

                “Is it really all that important?”

                Karkat’s answer is slow, thinking over it in his older-mindset. Domestication has led to thought, which has led to his acting like Kankri more than either of them would like to admit. When at last he does answer, his shoulder merely bobs up and down, brushing against Dave’s collarbone threateningly. “Guess not.”

                Silence falls around them until all he can hear is the crash-boom-bang of the Miles hundreds of kilometers away and the deep, reverberating echo in his chest. It sounds like a bad hurricane, where it picked up parts of roofing and slams it against the walls in an attempt to knock them free.

                “Have you ever pitied someone so much you would die for them?”

                Dave doesn’t even think about it. “Yes.”

                “What happened to them?”

                “I’m not entirely sure how to answer that.”

                “Well? What happened to them? Are they dead? Alive? New universe? Existed in some alternate timeline, but never in the Alpha?”

                “None of those.”

                “Well then what happened?”

                “Nothing. He’s sitting in my lap. That’s all that happened.”

                Karkat presses his lips to Dave’s cheek a little more forcibly than need be. The silence that follows leaves Karkat breathless with his forehead against the side of Dave’s neck. When at last the Miles retract, Karkat stands and pulls Dave to his feet, giving him a slow, sensuous kiss on the top of the roof.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                “Do you regret it?” Dave asks. He’s lying with his feet over the back of the couch, his head tipped down to watch the television upside down. Karkat’s walking out of the bathroom, eyebrow arched in disbelief at the position. He takes the long way around the couch, crossing behind Dave just so that he can knock his feet back over. Dave rights himself so that he’s lying on the couch and Karkat squeezes in behind him, putting his arm over Dave’s side.

                “Regret what?”

                “The venitard.”

                Karkat shakes his head, his nose brushing against the nape of Dave’s neck. “At the beginning I did, but I honestly don’t think I could have gone through another day with that pain. I never expected it to be reciprocated though.”

                Dave chuckles and rests his hand on Karkat’s elbow. “Grab the blanket off the back of the couch, Kark; I’m cold.”

                “Fucking shit for brains that was a perfectly fine moment.”

                Dave laughs and helps situate the blanket over the both of them.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                Nothing is violets and roses the moment that they move into the house. They fight and argue and bicker and break lamps. Dave teaches Karkat how to rap and Karkat teaches Dave how to shut-the-fuck-up-and-not-rap. Their arguments last for days, months sometimes, but they still go to bed together knowing that they may not survive the night.

                They have lived on Prospit for a month short of a year when Derse has finally been pierced through and destroyed completely. They have lived on Prospit for a month short of a sweep when Karkat says that he wants to go back to The House.

                Dave turns it down immediately. It’s a stupid idea that’s more than likely to get them killed before they even get half way there. Their muscles may still be toned and they can still fight, but they can’t—absolutely cannot—go back there. Not when they left it behind just over two years ago because they couldn’t stand the thought of staying at the last place their friends had been.

                So, of course, he pitches a fit, breaks a cup, he and Karkat get into a fist fight and Dave storms out of the house.

                Karkat watches the Red Miles strike down the park just on the other side of third, hoping he’ll come back. They’re a little closer than the program had predicted, but they come no closer than that and he’s safe, perfectly so, where he is.

                Dave comes home almost an hour after they stop, not at all injured, but his shoulders are slumped as if he’s too tired to even care about talking or making up.

                “All I’m saying is,” Karkat starts, arms crossed over his chest and watching Dave’s every move. “It’s been just over a sweep since we were last there. I think that they deserve us to at least go there every handful of them and just remind ourselves why we’re here. Why we thought that this was a good idea.”

                “Because if it hadn’t had been us, then it would have been one of them. I’d rather sacrifice myself than let them remain in this  _Hell hole_.”

                “Same here, but that doesn’t change the fact that, with or without you, I’m going. I’m going to go there and I’m going to come back. And if you’re not there with me when I go, then we’ll be pissed at each other for months, but fine, whatever, if that’s what you want, then that’s what you want.”

                Dave sighs again and kicks his shoes off almost violently. “A long time ago,” he sighs, resigned but still minutely pissed off, “I came into your debt. I’ll  _go_ , if it means I’m out of it.”

                “That fucking shower thing from when you flipped your shit after a nightmare? I thought that that was renounced when you fucked me to get me into this matespritship…. This venitard.”

                “Sex and me flipping my shit like that are two different things, Kark. So whatever. I’ll go with you, but  _only_ because of that. I’m going to bed.”


	12. Body, Mind and Soul

                The rubble that Derse left behind supplies an almost-straight path for them to take. The changing gravity is a little easier to deal with than the first time around. It still aches and their muscles pull, pushing them on, but they make it to the platform in not even a quarter of the time it took to get to Derse.

                The platform, surprisingly, is almost unchanged. They had talked to the Queen before they had left, telling her of their plan to leave briefly. She had wished them a warm goodbye and expressed her hope that they would survive it. There’s a Red Mile scheduled to touch down somewhere around the platform during their stay, but they don’t plan on being there for more than a day.

                It’s hard, seeing The House. The memory of Rose crying claws up Dave’s throat, the thought of the tears that had fallen down her face as she was forced to leave them behind almost too vivid. Karkat is stock still, almost frozen at his elbow. He can hear the horrible way he measures his breaths, the way that the scrabbles for Dave’s hand is miserable, but Dave clings to Karkat just as Karkat clings to him.

                Karkat’s voice breaks when he speaks, but Dave can’t spot any tears on his face or even in his eyes. “I’m… glad. You came here with me, Dave. It’s… Thanks.”

                Dave tugs him forward gently, leading up to the door. His hand burns as he lays it on top of the doorknob and all he can think about it how Jade should be there. She should be pushing Rose and Karkat out of the way and leaping in large bounds, looking everything over with Jake. He should be kicking Karkat until he stands up right now and getting smacked on the back of his head when he does get to his feet. He should be listening to Jade screaming to be released and Rose pointing out that this is their ticket to the new world.

                Dave should be standing there, counting the different panels and noticing the lack of a green one for him to take. He should see the lack of a purple tile and just realize, because that’s the only obvious difference between their groups and Dirk’s—theirs have Knights. They would protect their friends by forcing them to leave.

                Karkat swallows to his side. Dave thinks that Gamzee should be laughing right now, blood still smeared on his face and an arm over Aradia’s shoulder as he makes a few comments about how amazing it is that they’re going to a new universe. He should have Rose’s lithe body in his arms; he should be setting her down, careful of his own feet, and kissing her cheek goodbye. He should hear Dirk’s remark about how he isn’t surprised and listen to Roxy’s pained hiccoughs. He shouldn’t be standing here, alone if not for Karkat, working up the courage to open a door.

                It feels so,  _so_ heartbreakingly  _wrong_ to be standing on this platform, to be staring at this house.

                He pulls the door open and his voice catches as he spots two glowing boxes in front of him. Karkat pushes at him, just enough for him to see, and his breathing hitches, too. They stand and stare, watching as the glow changes between white and yellow and back again. Dust motes catch in the light, making it almost appear to sparkle. The light bounces off the walls of the room, spreading prismatic rainbows everywhere.

                They step forward, staring without seeing.

                Karkat’s voice catches twice before Dave tells him to start over. “Has this been here the whole time?”

                He wants to chuckle, to shrug, to play it off all cool-like, but he can’t. He can barely make his voice work. His back is too tight, too straight, the hair on the back of his neck is raised, and he just shakes his head. “I…. I don’t know.”

                Karkat licks his lips and steps forward. Dave tugs him back, away from the panel, and kisses him. He kisses him as if it’s his last gulp of fresh air he will ever have. Karkat clings desperately, knees going weak as he fights to stay standing up. When they pull apart, Karkat’s eyebrows are pinched and he’s scanning Dave’s face as if it holds all the answers. “I… What’s wrong with you, Dave? We’re going to the new universe.”

                “We don’t know if we’ll end up in the same one that the others went to. We don’t know if we’re going to go to the same one at all. When we touch down, we may not remember each other or we won’t remember them or they won’t remember us so just know that I fucking love you, alright? I love you.”

                Karkat’s fingers tighten in Dave’s shirt and he swallows. “You are the most pitiful thing I have ever met.”

                “I pity you.”

                “I love you.”

                The words sound weird coming from each other’s lips, even as Dave steps back and closes the door behind them. Karkat steps on one of the panels and Dave takes the other. Karkat’s panel flashes purple for a moment before he turns and waves. He watches Karkat disappear in a shining white light, scrunched into a ball the size of a basketball.

                It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as he thought it would when he follows after him. Everything just feels fuzzy, like waking from a bad dream.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                It’s like waking from a bad dream and into a nightmare.

                It burns. He feels like he’s caught in the middle of an inferno. He can’t possibly keep still; it hurts so much. He’s coughing, the taste of copper and iron fills his mouth and it’s all he can smell. There’s something cold, something like ice, on his forehead, and he’s crying out in pain. Every bone in his body his breaking, rearranging, shifting, nononono, please,  _someone wake him up_ , someone, anyone, Kark, Kark, Karkat, where are you,  _where are you_?

                There’s something in his hand, something that’s squeezing and it hurts, it hurts so much, but the pressure is cold and the noises in the room are so  _loud_. It’s like metal hitting against metal and reverberating through a warehouse, but it’s probably just cotton being pushed aside. He turns to the man beside him, or he assumes it’s a man by the way the hand curls around his. He opens his eyes, desperately, lips moving without conscious thought, begging, pleading, please, please just make the pain stop, anything, please.

                There’s a wave of cold water, like being forced into a shower when you have a fever and everything grows fuzzy. His eyesight wavers and relaxes, leaving him staring at the fuzzy Troll currently holding his hand on the other side of the bed. His eyes have black bags darker than before and there’s both exhaustion and worry swimming in red irises.

                “How’s that Dave?”

                He’s sweating and shaking, everything hurts, but it’s a distant hurt, the kind of morphine and oxycotin. He has a severe case of cotton mouth but fuck all if he cares. The sweat on his neck is enough to feel like needles and knives, he shouldn’t care about something as stupid as dry mouth.

                His voice is gasping, craving air, a sticky tongue making everything hard. With the distant pain comes a distant voice and he would laugh at how ridiculous he sounds but he doesn’t really think he can. “Good… glad… I’m glad… I’m glad Kark… glad.”

                “You’re in  _pain_ , dipshit,” he curses, but the smile on his face is gratuitous and his voice sounds relieved. “If you think you need more meds, tell us, ok? We’ve got enough to tranquilize a herd of hoofbeasts, it’s ok to ask. No blame.”

                He smiles, but shakes his head, tugging his hand from him carefully. It takes three tries to get his arm to move enough to place it on the back of Karkat’s neck and even then, it feels wrong. It’s like trying to lift a weight he can’t quite wrap his fingers around, then worse due to the drugs. Karkat follows anyway, though, and lets him press their lips together. Karkat’s hand lingers on the side of his face and it burns like a million infernos, but it’s comforting. “I’m glad,” he gasps, just as his vision starts to disappear around the corners. “That we’re together.”

                Karkat kisses his forehead and takes his hand again. “Get some sleep, Strider. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

                That’s the single most frightening sentence he has heard since he realized that Bro was dead. He closes his eyes and obliges, only after another searing kiss is pressed to his forehead.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                The pain doesn’t lessen over the course of the next week. Karkat says it’s been a human fortnight since they first touched down, but he can’t remember much. Glimpses of pain and stolen kisses mostly. He hears himself begging for the pain to stop more than he hears himself thinking. Whatever medicine he has going through his system is enough to either knock him out or have him so high on cloud nine that he ends up with his face in Karkat’s chest, his breathing rasping between his ribs.

                When everything finally breaks, he’s left staring, emotionless, worn down, at the ceiling of a room he vaguely recognizes. He can barely twitch his fingers and his lips feel like foreign entities. He can’t make his tongue work and the cotton mouth makes everything hard to handle.

                He stares at the unfamiliar ceiling for half an hour before the door opens and Karkat comes into view. He’s distorted and a bit fuzzy, but he can make out those nubby horns and blunt, pointy teeth anywhere.

                Karkat sits beside him on the edge of the bed and helps sit him up. They fight with coordinating his limbs enough to tilt a plastic cup of water up. Water slips from between his lips, wetting his shirt, and he curses when he notices it. Karkat just pushes the water back up, holding Dave’s fingers around the cup in the same way that Dave can’t make work. “It’s ok,” he says. “I’ll explain later when you’re more lucid. How’s the pain?”

                He manages to nod his head and sighs as Karkat rubs his hand over his forehead and down the side of his face. “Brandon says that your fever broke while I was out, but you’re probably still in pain. You should be disoriented, too. Unable to control your limbs?”

                He laughs through his nose and nods again. It’s a chore to focus on his fingers, completely alien to consciously raise his elbow and the only reason he manages to grab Karkat is because the Troll takes his hand the moment it lifts out of his lap. Karkat takes the hint, though, and holds him in as soft a hug as he’s willing to give. Karkat kisses his temple, carefully lying him back down.

                “Who’s… Bran…fon?”

                “I’ll explain later. It’s better for you to sleep right now.”

                “Lay with me?”

                Karkat nods and climbs over him to the open side of the bed. There’s an obnoxious sort of clicking from somewhere else in the house, but Karkat just lays his hand on top of Dave’s cheek, almost but not quite caressing his ear. “I know this is scary, Dave,” he whispers. “It’s frightening from my perspective. It’ll just take time. You’re good with time, right?”

                Dave manages a small smile and twitches his head just enough to brush the tip of his nose against Karkat’s wrist. “Dot…. A-knee-four.”

                “Not anymore?” Dave nods back and closes his eyes, letting the warmth of Karkat’s hand lull him back.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                He meets the mysterious Clicker before he meets Brandon. He’s still bedridden and barely able to control his limbs, but he’s started to regain dexterity in his tongue. It’s a giant crab, about six feet taller than Karkat is, and almost marble-white. The only parts that aren’t are the joints, where candy apple red blood has risen to the surface. It’s frightening, more brawn than brain, and shoves its nose up to him almost immediately upon his awakening. He sinks back into the mattress as far as he can go, still unable to move, and holds his breath.

                After their initial meeting, Crabdad deems him an ok-host and they talk as best as they can. The longer they talk, the more Crabdad seems to approve of him. It’s only three hours later, when he’s regained the ability to speak in words upwards of three syllables, that Karkat returns and jumps between them. It leaves Crabdad laughing and Dave snorts as he assures him that he’s fine, if not for the pain.

                “Do you want more medicine?”

                “No, it’s not that bad. Your lusus is nice.”

                “You’re crazy for even thinking that.”

                Dave chuckles and asks for a kiss. Karkat obliges briefly before taking up his position and attempting to feed him. It’s awkward to have his hand forcibly curled around a spoon, but it works and by the end of the meal he has started to remember how to use his elbow without thinking about it again.

                Crabdad curls up on the ground beside Dave that night. It’s the first night since Dave started regaining consciousness that he and Karkat have slept beside each other all the way through and the alien feeling of Karkat’s arm over his side has almost been craved for. The steady beat of his heart against Dave’s back and the flutter of his breath against Dave’s collarbone are calming enough that he can ignore the sounds of an active house outside of the door.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                Crabdad keeps him company on the days that are easier to muster through. The days that he can curl his hands into fists and, with help, sit against the wall. He can hold conversations with a being that can’t even speak English but seems to be able to communicate just fine with him. On the harder days, he can barely open his eyes, can’t even get his jaw to open far enough to help Karkat get him to drink. He slobbers over himself more oft than not and makes a right pitiful mess.

                When Karkat finally forfeits and realizes that Crabdad isn’t going to murder him in his sleep, they start joking around with each other and really getting to know each other. He’s still part of the Lusus Zoo, as far as he’s been told, but Dave doesn’t even know what a Lusus Zoo is, let alone what being part of it entails. He tells him about his life growing up and gets chastised for telling Karkat the parts he did in the order he did.

                A month after they touch down to the new universe, Karkat brings his husktop into the room and sits beside him. He surfs the internet, reads news articles aloud and basically acquaints Dave with the new world they’re in. He likes the stutter and drone of Karkat’s voice, though, deep compared to Crabdad’s and entirely comforting. On good days, he rolls over and puts his forehead to Karkat’s thigh, thankful that the laptop’s fan is on the left side of the computer. On bad days, he shuts his eyes and listens to him, focusing on the sound of his voice and not the pain.

                Karkat and Crabdad are almost too empathetic for a situation he doesn’t even understand. It’s both annoying and entirely relieving.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                He’s been bed ridden for two months by the time the pain has subsided enough for Karkat to put his arm under Dave’s armpits and lift him into the air. Putting any amount of weight on his feet makes it feel like he’s been shot and they collapse out from under him thrice before Karkat can even get him to balance. They haven’t taken even one step by the time Dave is on his ass and frustrated at the world.

                They work at it until he’s fallen down twenty times and Karkat says that anymore will hinder his rehabilitation, not help. Dave wonders who told him what to do to help him heal, wonders who Brandon is, wonders where the fuck he is, all in one long stream of conscious before falling asleep with his arm over Karkat’s side.

                He’s given a regimen of what to do to get better at controlling his limbs. Mostly it consists of working his arms again, not his legs. When asked why, he’s told that he has to be able to catch himself when he falls and he can’t really object to that.

                He’s given Karkat’s husktop and told not to look up porn or go on any bad sites before Karkat disappears again. He wonders where the other man goes as he opens Trollian.

                It auto-logs him onto carcinoGeneticist.

                A bunch of their friends from the game appear as online, but the moment that he tries to click on Rose’s name, he gets an error message. He gets one on John, Jade, Dirk—they all fail. He almost wants to cry, but when at last he gets a conversation, it’s a gift from Heaven.

                carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling opportuneBerserker [OB]

CG: berserker?  
OB: you know if i recall correctly our first conversation is supposed to be my random encountering you  
OB: assuming youre dave  
OB: which you are  
CG: …  
CG: this is our first conversation?  
OB: no  
OB: this is my first conversation  
OB: this is one of the last ones youll have with us  
CG: why?  
OB: not entirely sure either  
OB: just how it works out  
OB: sorry bro  
CG: no its k  
OB: cool  
OB: how are you?  
OB: the pain?  
CG: better  
CG: you know at this point im not even surprised that you know about this  
OB: i know more than you do  
CG: why am i not surprised?  
OB: lol  
CG: did you just fucking lol me you little shit?  
OB: yea gotta problem  
CG: here i was fucking thinking you were dirk  
CG: but youre not are you  
OB: no  
OB: no im not  
OB: sorry to disappoint  
CG: the most disappointing part about this is that i cant contact anyone from this profile  
OB: know what you mean  
OB: youre slow to type this is your dexterity practice isnt it?  
CG: yeah  
OB: welcome to your new body  
OB: this world is a lot better for people like you than your last  
CG: yeah  
CG: despite never leaving this room  
CG: i can tell

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                With Crabdad’s help, he starts relearning how to walk. By the end of the third month, Karkat catches him standing on the other side of the room. He’s pissed, ready to bitch up a storm, but Dave takes long, fast strides across the room and throws his arms around him. He squeezes just like he had the day he thought he lost him to the Red Miles and Karkat returns it just as tight.

                “Feeling better?” Karkat asks.

                He nods, mute, and holds Karkat’s jaw as he kisses him.

                The next morning, he’s shown the rest of the house. The bathroom (a room he knows without consciously ever being here. He suspects that Karkat had to shower him a lot more than he had in The Game), the living room, a room resembling a pen that Crabdad lays claim to, the kitchen, another bathroom, the door to another bedroom and a few other rooms. It’s a rather large house compared to those he’s used to, but small compared to most footage rules.

                Meeting Brandon is frightening. He has to sit down in order to face him and his stomach flips and sinks, begging to be released as if his eyes having to see him isn’t enough torture.

                Brandon is his Bro. His Bro from the other universe, his home world, with a different name but same face, same eyes, same hat, same muscles, same smile, same glasses, same everything. It’s his Bro and he even remembers the other universe, but he seems to understand what shock Dave is going through when he just sits on the coffee table across from him.

                “Karkat says you’re doing better.”

                He shakes his head in disbelief and Brandon (notBronotBronotBronotBro) laughs as he puts his hand on his shoulder. He can feel tears bundling in his horrible vision because this isn’t Bro, it’s not, but it  _is_  and the last he saw of Bro was impaled with a sword through his chest—with  _Dirk’s sword_ through his chest and, wow, wow, no, no, this isn’t him, this isn’t him,  _but it is_.

                Their hug is entirely unironic and tearfilled and Brandon mutters about missing him, about how hard it had been not knowing if he was alright in The Game, and he just sobs because he can’t think of the words to correctly describe how hard it was to stare at a dead body. Dead bodies are one thing, but the living version of the person who had been the most important man in his life for thirteen years is so much more.

                Karkat excuses himself and he hears Crabdad click a few times before everything dies down. Dave knows he’s doing the same thing to Crabdad he’s doing to Brandon but fuck all if he cares.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                He’s been able to walk, talk, and be completely mobile for a week before Brandon finally explains to him what it is that went wrong. The night before, though, it rains. It might as well be a hurricane compared to how dry the Veil is and he spends the night with a heating-pad wrapped around his left leg. Karkat sits with him and they watch action flicks until the ice cream runs out and they fall asleep against each other.

                Brandon sits him down and he explains about how he and the other guardians made it to the new universe. It hadn’t been all that different from the way they had, but they made it there with their deaths since their lives hadn’t been tied to The Game. He ends the topic with a simple “that’s pretty much all there is to say on the matter”. Dave nods, because all it was, was that their deaths and their familial ties to the players had transported them over, along with the players that had been murdered by their teammates. Startling revelation on Karkat’s part, but not entirely unseen.

                “So, why was I in such bad condition before?”

                “The idiot that had your body before you did broke his leg right before you took your body back.

                “There are three parts to your body, as recognized by The Game: your body, your mind and something akin to a soul. When he broke his leg, his soul fractured slightly in order to help his mind reorient his body to fix it in hopes that his soul would rearrange itself back to normal. Well, when you transferred over, your body was used to kickstart the process of cross-universe-travel, leaving your mind and soul behind. Since you took back your body here, your soul wasn’t broken like your body was. Your soul had to break in just the right ways so that your mind could start your body on repair, but with the way that it had to be done, you were in pain. With how long it took for your soul to break and your body to heal, you were on bed-rest for so long that you had to undergo the PT that you did, only it was worsened because your soul didn’t fit right with the body. Do you understand?”

                “The only thing I don’t understand is how in the world there was someone else in this body before me.”

                “Of course there was. A body can survive without a mind, but without a soul it can’t even breathe. Those things that are natural—like breathing and keeping your heart beating—are managed by the soul, while the rest is the mind. Your body had to have a soul in order for it to grow as much as it did so that you could overtake it when it was ready, but without a mind the soul is useless. From the day it was born to the day you overtook, the placeholder’s soul knew that it wasn’t his body. It’s yours.”

                “But I took this life from someone else.”

                “No. This life was made and crafted for you to take.”

                “And if I had died before SBurb was even over?”

                “Then you would have ended up here like Eridan and Vriska did. So they showed up a little earlier than the rest of you, but that’s about it.”

                “Then…. Rose and the others? They’re in this universe, too?”

                “Of course they are. They crashed into each other on the way here and I was stuck caring for them for a few days. They were out of my hair, for the most part, by then. None of them had broken themselves before the transfer. Though, I’ve got to say, I really liked this one girl… what was her name? N-something…. Natasha? Netysha?”

                “Nepeta,” Karkat answers. “Her name is Nepeta.”

                “Ah, yeah, her. She was really nice after you got past her talking in her quirk.”

                Karkat nods his head briefly. “And overbearing.”

                “I can see that.”

                “No, wait, you two are getting head of yourselves.” Dave says, waiting for Brandon to look back at him to continue. “Do the others remember us at all? We forced them to come here without us almost two years ago.”

                Brandon shrugs his shoulders. “To be honest, I very much doubt it. They were pissed at you and mostly heartbroken, but that dagger-kid? He’s got a head on his shoulders alright. Smart enough to know that you two had unfinished business there. Couple of pretty words and they were eating right out of the palm of his hand, except for Rose, but she went along anyway. She seemed to be more comfortable doing that. They agreed that since you two forced them to leave, it would be better for them to leave you behind, too. Heartbreaking, but it was the best option.”

                “Do you know… what they’re doing now?”

                “Rose has the first book in a trilogy published, Roxy owns an alcohol line and Kanaya is an up-and-coming fashion designer, off the top of my head.”

                “John? Jade?”

                “I think one of them works at a pet store and the other is schooling part-time. Other part is some bagger at a grocery store.”

                Dave feels himself smile before he even really realizes it. They’re all ok, happy as far as he can tell, and definitely ok enough to carry on. “Dirk? Jake?”

                Brandon taps his lips with the tip of his finger, shrugging. “I know one of the Humans started working for some robotics company, so that’s probably Dirk…. The last of the Humans went to work with Roxy. Some sort of device to keep her from drinking all the inventory or something…. Or was that John that did that?” He shrugs.

                Karkat clears his throat. “And the Trolls?”

                “I don’t know anything about the ones from before, other than John picked Vriska up and started dating almost three weeks into their lives here. On and off. Crazy idiot. But I know that Aradia co-owns a pawn shop with that clown-guy. Another went into computers with the same company the robotics engineer works for…. Am I missing someone?”

                “Terezi. What happened to Terezi?”

                “She went to a judiciary school. Still there, as far as I know, but she’s been interning out to a Human-based lawfirm. Damn if they haven’t suddenly rocketed up in closed cases. Best damn closer in the city. I’m afraid of what’ll happen if she gets her degree and can do things other than closing. She’s terrifyingly good at what she does.”

                Karkat sighs in relief. His shoulders slump and a smile graces his features. Yes, yes, Dave agrees. TZ got what she always wanted: justice. He’s glad to hear that.

                “If we went to meet them… would they remember us?”

                Brandon returns to looking at Dave. “Chances are: no. I wouldn’t even risk it. But, knowing you and your stubborn ways, I think you have enough of a cover to go meet them. The Host that took care of your body before you worked for the Church of The Sinister Sisters. Ironically enough, Karkat’s Host worked for the Church of The Blessed Ones. Basically the division between Derse and Prospit in this world. They’re… known pretty well for door-to-door advertising.”

                This is how Dave ends up studying a Sinister Bible while Karkat reads the Blessed Tomes, side-by-side, leaning against each other in bed. They commit the verses to memory as best as they can while Dave gets used to being, while not photophobic but, nearsighted.

                The glasses are light and feel like reading glasses compared to his old browlines.

) – ( - ) – ( - ) – (

                “I’m thinking of getting a tattoo,” Dave comments one night as he waits for Karkat to come to bed.

                “What of? Nothing stupid like SBaHJ or anything, right?”

                He shakes his head and pulls his foot up, bare of the brand that had once marred it. With no war going on, this body hadn’t been forced to do what the last had, and had never been branded or whipped. The marks of his three-year enslavement no longer remain anywhere physically. “I was thinking a snake.”

                Karkat doesn’t question it. He doesn’t try to redirect him and he doesn’t try to convince him it’s a stupid idea. All he does is place one hand on top of his foot and kiss him before lying down beside him. “You’re an idiot, Strider,” he says. “How the hell will you walk while it’s healing?”

                “All the better to get it now,” he says. “Before I’m expected to be constantly on my feet.”

                “Talk to Brandon tomorrow,” he yawns. “He has to brand the lusii somehow. I doubt he uses fire to do it.”

                “Sleep well, Karkat.”

                “Come to bed, idiot; it’s cold.”

                He lies down behind him gladly.


	13. Completing the Paradox

                The day that they’re finally ready to go meet the others has Dave’s stomach in knots. He chews on his nails, his lip, anything that he can get his teeth on. He stares at himself in the mirror with his “correctional glasses” (they’re fucking annoying, but he’s gotten used to them, for the most part), wondering if they’ll still see his sunglasses or if they’ll see these.

                They’ve been taking walks for the majority of the past week, working on building muscle tone. The first day they did it was epically embarrassing; he had had to stop, barely even into the park, and sit down with his head tilted back. Karkat had come up behind him and pressed his head against his hipbones, wiping his hands over Dave’s forehead, his cheeks, his neck, his collarbone, his jaw. No lighter than a feather and much more distracting that he had thought they would be three years ago.

                When he finally manages to make it a mile in walking, he throws his arms around Karkat’s neck and they laugh. Karkat gives him a small kiss and Dave puts their foreheads together, staring each other in the eye. Karkat tightens his arms on Dave’s waist and he lets his arms slip down to the bottom of the Troll’s ribcage.

                The house shouldn’t be frightening, though. Brandon doesn’t live that far from them, not even a mile, so they manage to put on clothes reminiscent of Fathers back on his old planet and walk there without hesitance. Dave’s dark purple ensemble clashes horribly with Karkat’s golden-yellow one and they can only laugh and mutter about getting better jobs soon.

                Dave is almost afraid they won’t answer the door after he knocks. It’s polite, something that he’s unaccustomed to doing, and it has him asking, under his breath, if he should use the doorbell. Before he gets the chance to, Rose opens the door.

                There is absolutely no recognition in her eyes or face. It’s like she’s seeing a stranger.

                “May we interest you in joining the Church of The Sinisterly Sisters?” He nods his head in Karkat’s direction, “Or, perhaps, the Church of The Blessed Ones?”

                She looks ready to close the door and Dave wouldn’t blame her if she did, but at the last moment something behind her eyes makes her smile sweetly and nod, opening the door wider and inviting them in. He thanks her, carefully removing his hat, and blinks twice as the transition lenses shift to match the inside.

                He doesn’t immediately recognize Gamzee without his scar or makeup, but the long horns and lazy slump to his shoulders are a dead giveaway. One by one, he realizes that the others are here. Almost everyone…. Jade and Terezi aren’t here, probably either out at work or at school, but the others, they’re all here. Some of them have to right themselves to properly entertain strangers, but they’re here.

                He and Karkat trade spots in their routines, going back and forth, praising their churches because, over all, they are actually good and they aren’t here to bash religion. Their eyes scan the others while the other speaks, trying to think of ways to influence their speech to see if there is any way to get even the slightest bit of recognition.

                By the time they’re done, Kanaya, whose hair is longer and fashion sense wiser, kindly declines for the majority of them, but Rose hums. “I dunno, I kind of like them. I think I’ll go to a, what’s it called? A mass or two for each. Can I get your names in case I need to ask questions?”

                Karkat says his as they shake hands. Dave takes her hand and says a quick thank-you as he introduces himself. There is absolutely nothing in her eyes to imply that she has ever met a “Dave Strider” before.

                They leave with barely another word and step off the sidewalk, into the bike lane, when they meet up with Jade and Terezi on the street. Jade stops and, rather bluntly, says they didn’t need to do it, but the blush on her cheeks implies otherwise. Dave waves it off as something benign and that he was happy to do and Terezi giggles, pulling Jade back to the house. He isn’t surprised to see a grocery store apron on Jade and a satchel over her shoulder for school. He had figured John was the one in the pet store anyway.

                Brandon asks how it went the moment they get back. Karkat merely shakes his head. Dave shrugs. He’s fully aware of how broken his voice sounds as he walks straight pass him, into the guest room they had been gifted when they switched to their new bodies. “Better than expected.”

                Karkat chases him down and walks through the door before it can close behind him. Dave strips and changes into a pair of pajamas. Karkat tries to hide in his neck and he lets him, for the while.

                Late that night, Dave takes Karkat’s husktop from him and opens Trollian outside of the internet browswer with the classes that Karkat is interested in taking. A portion of the boondollars had transferred into their accounts—enough to get on their feet with but not enough to live off of—so Karkat was attempting to see if computers were the way to go.

                “What are you doing?”

                “Completing a paradox.”

                “What?”

                carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling opportuneBerserker [OB]

CG: berserker?   
OB: you know if i recall correctly our first conversation is supposed to be my random encountering you   
OB: assuming youre dave   
OB: which you are

                “I thought that Berserker… was Dirk and Jake.”

                “Nope,” he mutters, even as he waits for his past self’s reply. “We’ve just been talking to ourselves the whole time.”

                Karkat puts his head on Dave’s collar and he can relate. This is the most alone either of them have felt since they closed the door and watched twelve orbs shoot from the roof.

                Dave kisses his forehead and waits to reply.

                He isn’t surprised that all he has in this world is himself and Karkat, but that’s fine, because that’s how it’s been for the last sweep anyway. He might as well get used to it eventually. After all, none of the others even know who he is.

The End

 


End file.
